Organization: Meros Center, Kijabe Hospital, and others
Background/Context:
Moral injury is a growing area of concern for healthcare mission teams as cultures collide and values conflict within and outside the professional healthcare space. Understanding the individual experience is important and understanding the prevalence and burden of moral injury on a broader scale is also needed to develop effective services and programs for mission teams, missionary and national providers.
Funded By: Donors Like You
Research Question:
Given the personal and organizational impacts of moral injury and the value of early intervention, the overarching research question for this study is how to appropriately implement an assessment tool to identify moral injury among healthcare workers working in four different faith-based multicultural (mission) hospital settings.
Study Aims:
- Implement the Mission-based Moral Injury Assessment Survey in a faith-based multicultural (mission) hospital setting
- Understand the acceptability, value, and reliability of the results
- Evaluate the difference in results between expat (non-local) and national healthcare workers
- Determine other potential protective factors of moral injury, including demographic, interpersonal, and organization-level variables
Impact:
This program of research aims to develop a method for assessing moral injury among healthcare workers in cross-cultural, faith-based facilities worldwide, enabling timely interventions that support and protect their physical, mental, and spiritual health.
Open Positions:
No Open Positions
Timeline: MAY 2026 – APR 2027
One Response
June 2026 Update: Ethics review is in progress at Kijabe Hospital in Kenya, and we are delighted to partner with Dr. Jonathan Dimos at Colorado Christian University on helping to explain why moral injury rates are important for hospital leadership teams to know about. We are working to finalize the three other mission hospital locations and anticipate getting those sites started within the next few months. We are grateful for the funders of this project and the hospital teams that have the courage to look more closely at how difficult circumstances might impact their staff. Our prayer is that by understanding this topic at the organization level, we can help hospital leadership and healthcare mission organizations better support the mental and spiritual health of their teams, regardless of nationality. As it says in Romans 14:19: “So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.” (NASB)