ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Organ. Psychol.
Sec. Employee Well-being and Health
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/forgp.2025.1693082
This article is part of the Research TopicPromoting Mental Health among Healthcare ProfessionalsView all 3 articles
Moral Dilemmas in Healthcare During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Organizational Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Psychology, Milano, Italy
- 2University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
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Moral dilemmas in healthcare arise when professionals face choices involving conflicting ethical principles. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges for physicians and nurses, particularly in emergency and intensive care units (ICUs), exacerbating ethically distressing situations. This study explores how organizational structures, policies, and leadership influenced healthcare professionals' ethical decisions during the pandemic. Adopting an organizational perspective, the paper examines the lived experiences of moral distress among frontline healthcare workers, emphasizing how moral dilemmas were interpreted and addressed through processes of sensemaking and ethical suffering.
Keywords: moral dilemmas, healthcare, COVID-19 pandemic, Ethical suffering, organizational sensemaking
Received: 26 Aug 2025; Accepted: 08 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vecchio and Colombo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Luca Piero Vecchio, luca.vecchio@unimib.it
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