Traumatology, Vol 31(4), Dec 2025, 459-470; doi:10.1037/trm0000630
During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, experiences of health care providers were labeled as moral injuries in numerous research articles. Prior to COVID, this construct was applied primarily to combat veterans. This conceptual review examines whether moral injury is an appropriate construct to describe health care providers’ experiences. Richardson et al. (2020) identified seven definitional themes that emerged from their review of 124 studies in military samples. The present conceptual review compares recent studies on health care providers to those seven definitional themes. Multiple reviews were conducted from 2021 to 2025 of PubMed, CINAHL, EBSCO, SCOPUS, and Web of Science using narrow search terms. Articles included were empirical studies that included three variables: COVID, health care providers, and moral injury. These searches yielded 46 qualitative and quantitative studies, and five reviews of empirical studies. Articles that did not contain these three variables were excluded. Richardson et al.’s (2020) definitional themes for moral injury included ethics, high-stress situation, orientation, betrayal, psychobehavioral wound, spiritual wound, and reconciliation. Health care providers experienced all of these. Betrayal was the strongest theme and reconciliation the weakest. Their experiences caused serious sequelae such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. In addition, their experiences led to an existential crisis, which was manifested as burnout. As a result, they considered suicide or leaving their jobs. In conclusion, moral injury is appropriate for describing the experiences of health care providers during COVID. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)