Rebuilding a foundation of trust

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to the US health care system that created ethical tensions among clinicians, leaders, health care organizations, and the public. Those tensions ultimately resulted in broken trust – a foundation for ethical practice – across the system, and symptoms of moral suffering, burnout, workplace violence, and alarming shortages of health care workers.

This conversation explored the complexities of health care in the aftermath of the pandemic, its effects on communities and the people delivering care, and provided a roadmap for health care leaders to restore a foundation of trust.

Cynda H. Rushton, PHD, MSN, BSN, RN, is the Anne and George L. Bunting Professor of Clinical Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the School of Nursing, and co-chairs the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Ethics Committee and Consultation Service. A founding member of the Berman Institute, she co-led the first National Nursing Ethics Summit that produced a Blueprint for 21st Century Nursing Ethics. In 2016, she co-led a national collaborative State of the Science Initiative: Transforming Moral Distress into Moral Resilience in Nursing and co-chaired the American Nurses Association professional issues panel that created A Call to Action: Exploring Moral Resilience Toward a Culture of Ethical Practice.

Cynda is the chief synergy strategist for Maryland’s R3 Resilient Nurses Initiative, a statewide initiative to build resilience and ethical practice in nursing students and novice nurses. She is co-creator of the Mindful Ethical Practice and Resilience Academy (MEPRA). She serves on the Nursing Advisory Board for Corporate Counseling Associates. Cynda is a Hastings Center Fellow, Past-Chair of the Hastings Center Fellows Council, and Trustee Emeritus and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. The recipient of many awards, she received the Marguerite Rodgers Kinney Distinguished Career Award and the Distinguished Researcher award from American Association of Critical Care Nurses. She is the editor and author of Moral Resilience: Transforming Moral Suffering in Healthcare and co-creator of the Rushton Moral Resilience Scale (RMRS).

Jessica Perlo, MPH, is the Executive Vice President of the ABIM Foundation, a nonprofit focused on advancing medical professionalism and clinician leadership to improve the health care system. Jessica is an expert in workforce well-being, quality, and safety and teaches and coaches around the globe, building individual and organizational capability for improvement and well-being, and has authored publications on these topics.