Invisible Moral Wounds of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Are We Experiencing Moral Injury?

The sighs of the ventilator for the latest patient with COVID-19 remind me how scarce resources are. I see the ones who waited too long and the ones who arrived too late because they live in an underserved community and didn’t have access to testing or treatment. When I close my eyes at night, I recall a patient, full of catheters and tubes and attached to machines, who breathlessly whispers words I cannot decipher as his life recedes. Again, I watch the monitor document the last moments of life as he lay there alone. I hear the pained conversations informing family members that they cannot visit because the risk of spreading the virus is too great; exceptions are made only if we are able to predict when death is near—but now it is often and unpredictably near. And I wonder, “Was I a good nurse today? What kind of person...