The Moral Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Nurses’ Burnout, Work Satisfaction and Adaptive Work Performance: The Role of Autobiographical Memories of Potentially Morally Injurious Events and Basic Psychological Needs

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in unprecedented exposure to Potentially Morally Injurious Events (PMIEs) for nurses, in which they were both moral transgressors and moral victims, with deleterious consequences on their psycho-social health and functioning. Our experimental design compared memories o...

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Published inInternational journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 19; no. 13; p. 7645
Main Authors Gherman, Mihaela Alexandra, Arhiri, Laura, Holman, Andrei Corneliu, Soponaru, Camelia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 22.06.2022
MDPI
Subjects
Adaptive sampling
Autonomy
Burnout
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Design of experiments
Ethics
Experimental design
Hypotheses
Identity
Medical research
Memory
Moral injury
Motivation
Nurses
Pandemics
Recall
Stress
Violations
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in unprecedented exposure to Potentially Morally Injurious Events (PMIEs) for nurses, in which they were both moral transgressors and moral victims, with deleterious consequences on their psycho-social health and functioning. Our experimental design compared memories of PMIEs with memories of severe moral transgressions (SMTs), in which participants were only moral transgressors. Drawing from Self-Determination Theory and research on moral auto-biographical episodic memories, we assessed a conceptual model describing the impact of recalling a single PMIE or SMT event on nurses’ burnout, work satisfaction and adaptive performance. Our convenience sample comprised 614 Romanian nurses, and data was analyzed with path analysis, general linear modelling, and t-tests. Findings showed that memories of PMIEs, compared to SMTs, were more autonomy thwarting, being associated with more controlled work motivation, less moral learning, higher burnout, less work satisfaction, and adaptive performance. Burnout, moral learning, and work satisfaction were significant mediators of the relationships between PMIE and SMT recall and, respectively, adaptive performance. Our results highlight the urgency for organizational practices of moral repair for nurses after the pandemic, along with interventions meant to increase their autonomy and self-determined work motivation.
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ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph19137645