What Is Moral Injury: A Nurse Coach’s Perspective on Healing from Within
Most nurses completely understand what burnout is, but not enough of us are talking about moral injury.
If you’ve been feeling a kind of weight that doesn’t lift with time off…
If work still follows you home in the form of guilt, anger, or numbness…
OR
If something about the way care is delivered hasn’t been sitting right with you for a long time…
This might help put words to what you’ve been carrying – and offer some insight on how to move forward.
Let’s talk about moral injury.
What Moral Injury Is in Nursing and Why It Feels So Heavy
Moral injury happens when you’re placed in situations that go against your values and often they are outside your control.
Unfortunately, this is something nurses are faced with more than once in their careers.
Sometimes moral injury builds through repeated experiences, the kind that slowly wear you down shift after shift. Other times, there is one specific situation that stands out because it goes directly against everything you believe about care, fairness, or right and wrong.
Often, it is both.
It can show up as:
Guilt that doesn’t seem to go away
Anger or resentment toward leadership or “the system”
Emotional numbness or detachment as a way of coping
A growing loss of meaning in the work you once cared deeply about
This ongoing moral conflict often exists alongside burnout and contributes to it. It adds layers of emotional weight that don’t resolve with rest alone.
When the work you care about starts to feel misaligned with what you’re being asked to do, it affects more than your energy. It impacts how you see yourself and whether nursing is the right path for you.
That’s why moral injury can feel so heavy, and why certain moments stay with you long after the shift ends.
What Moral Injury Actually Looks Like for Nurses
To give you a clearer picture of what moral injury can look like I want to share a specific experience from when I was training to specialize in the ER.
During trauma orientation, a police officer came into my trauma room, unconscious, with CPR in progress after being shot.
At the same time, another patient with no major health concerns was screaming, swearing, and being restrained. It was the man who had shot the police officer.
As an orientee, all I could do was watch.
I watched one patient lose his life right in front of me, while the team continued caring for the person who shot him.
Time of death was called.
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
I didn’t have language for it then, but this was one of many moral injuries I would experience working in the ER. And honestly, they exist everywhere in nursing.
For many nurses, the pandemic created similar experiences, many of which we are still recovering from:
Watching patients die alone
Providing care without adequate resources or PPE
Being exposed to bullying or violence
Carrying extreme workloads due to chronic understaffing
For some nurses, moral injury has accumulated over time.
For others, there have been moments they still can’t shake.
Both leave a lasting mark.
Healing From Within: What Actually Helps
Healing from moral injury doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or pretending it didn’t affect you. And it doesn’t mean fixing the healthcare system on your own.
Healing starts with processing, not pushing through.
Some tangible ways nurses begin healing from moral injury include:
Naming the moral conflict instead of turning it inward as guilt or self-blame
Processing anger, grief, and sadness rather than suppressing them to survive the next shift
Reconnecting with your values without continuing to sacrifice yourself for them
Supporting your nervous system after long periods of survival mode
Self-care matters here, not as a checklist, but as a way to create safety and recovery after carrying so much.
I’ve shared practical post-shift self-care strategies for nurses here in this blog post: “The Ultimate Post-Shift Self-Care Checklist for Nurses: Release, Recharge & Reconnect”
But self-care is really only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to healing from moral injury.
Why Support From Other Nurses Matters
One of the most damaging parts of moral injury is isolation.
When no one names it, nurses often assume they’re part of the problem or that it’s part of the job.
Moral injury comes up again and again in my work with nurses, and one of the biggest shifts I see happens when nurses realize they’re not alone in this.
That’s why I created the Self-Care for Nurses by Nurses Facebook Group.
Any nurse is welcome and encouraged to join (it’s completely free!)
It’s a space where nurses have come together and are talking openly about burnout, moral injury, and the emotional weight of this work.
If This Is Hitting Too Close to Home
If this is resonating, it doesn’t mean you’re weak or not cut out for nursing. It means you’ve been carrying moral weight from a broken system.
I became a nurse coach because I saw how many nurses were struggling with burnout, moral injury, and compassion fatigue without getting access to proper support.
If you’d like to talk nurse-to-nurse about what you’re experiencing and what support might help, I offer a free clarity call.
👉 Book your free clarity call today.
Awareness opens the door. Support helps you move through it with more clarity and less weight.
