Prevalence, components and consequences of moral injury: preliminary validation of a new brief measure

Aim The aim of this study was to design and use a parsimonious survey tool to use in real time to assess moral injury and describe how moral injury relates to burnout and intent to leave the job. The Moral Injury Quotient (MIQ) is derived from this 6-item tool. Findings The MIQ metric has good performance characteristics and captures a substantiative portion of moral injury. It is related to clinically meaningful changes; each 10-point increase in the MIQ was associated with 125% increased odds of burnout (p < 0.001) and 50% increased odds of intending to leave the job (p < 0.001). Conclusions Measuring and addressing moral injury has major workforce implications. This metric is an “off the shelf” tool that may be helpful in busy clinical settings to assess, implement improvements, and reassess for reductions in moral injury.