If I Betray These Words: Moral Injury in Medicine and Why It’s So Hard for Clinicians To Put Patients First

Doctors often enter the medical field with the desire to help people. This is punctuated by the Hippocratic oath they take, words that most never intend to betray. Unfortunately, the current medical model often prevents doctors from doing what their patients need. Doctors Dean and Talbot, cofounders of Moral Injury of Healthcare, give a name to this incongruity that physicians often feel: moral injury. Their book shows that this occurs because the corporation of healing gets in the way of the practice of healing, and many doctors feel they must act against their deeply held beliefs and convictions. The book gives anecdotal stories of physicians facing moral injury. It also offers solutions for improvement and how to help clinicians put patients first without fear or moral injury. Helping physicians to freely do this can improve the field of medicine for both physicians and their patients.