Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, health workers are facing morally challenging, stressful, and life-threatening decisions while working with limited human and medical resources. The purpose of the current study was to determine the influence of Moral Injury and Light Triad (LT) personality traits on anxiety and depression symptoms of health-care personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was used, the study included a sample of 169 health-care workers. Data was gathered through the Moral Injury Symptom Scale for Health Professionals (MISS-HP), Light Triad Scale (LTS), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder- 7 (GAD-7), and the Patient-Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Results suggest that almost 9 out of 10 respondents experienced at least one potentially morally injurious event, 45.6% were at significant risk of impairment related to Moral Injury. Working with limited staff and resources, and the implications of it, were among the most common potentially morally injurious situations reported by the respondents. Results suggest that MISS-HP Mistrust subscale has significant negative correlations with Light Triad traits. A hierarchical regression model determined that Moral Injury, but not Light Triad traits, significantly affected depression symptoms. The overall model accounted for 42.6% of the variance in depression scores. On the other hand, anxiety symptoms were significantly predicted by Moral Injury, as did LTS-Humanism. The model accounted for 38.2% of the variance in anxiety scores. Control variables included respondents’ sex, years of experience, profession, and prior COVID-19 diagnosis. The results were discussed according to their implications to public health.