Objective:

To estimate the prevalence of moral injury among animal care workers and identify contributing factors related to their experiences.

Approach:

Key Findings:

• 83.5% of participants endorsed at least one morally injurious experience pathway.
• The most common pathway was witnessing (63.9%), followed by being affected by others’ transgressions (38.5%) and direct participation (29.2%).
• 18.9% of endorsers met criteria for moral injury as a clinical syndrome, and 21.4% for moral distress (subclinical).
• Shelter workers reported the highest levels of functional impairment, trust violations, and depression.
• The MIOS Shame subscale was more strongly associated with depression and functional impairment than the Trust Violations subscale.

Interpretation:

Limitations:

• The study's cross-sectional design limits causal inferences.
• A small number of non-endorsers met caseness thresholds, raising questions about the comprehensiveness of current pathway categories.

Conclusion:

Attribution Notice

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