MBE graduate Barry Kussman, MBBCh, SM, FFA(SA), along with Center member and Associate Professor of Radiology at Boston Children's Hospital, Stephen D. Brown, MD, FACR, were published in the August edition of the American Society of Anesthesiologists' newsletter. Dr. Kussman's MBE capstone project focused on the cause of burnout in the field of anesthesiology. He is a Senior Associate in Cardiac Anesthesia in the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, and an Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School.

'Moral Injury as an Ethical Root Cause of Burnout in Anesthesiologists' discusses the unique characteristics of the anesthesiology profession that exacerbate moral distress and moral injury in healthcare workers. Moral distress, as discussed in the publication, is caused by situations in which providers are unable to act as they deem ethically correct due to institutional or hierarchal constraints. Dr. Kussman gave clear examples of morally distressing situations for anesthesiologists, such as:

• The decision to continue or withdraw life-sustaining care of a critically ill patient
• The decision to report inexpert/inadequate surgeons to appropriate leadership
• The ability to obtain informed consent from patients who are under debilitating stress

Dr. Kussman's work in clinical ethics emphasizes that the repetition of these and other psychologically difficult situations can lead to moral injury, the deep wounding of a practitioner's identity and moral compass, culminating in physician burnout. Kussman and Brown's work to identify and understand the anesthesiology-related factors that contribute to this condition are an example of how the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics community is working to advance modern medicine with respect to the ethics involved in treating patients.