Job Stress and Ethical Decision-Making Among Healthcare Workers in Post-Pandemic Infectious Disease Control

In the post-pandemic era, healthcare workers face moral dilemmas balancing individual rights with public health concerns. Taiwan's COVID-19 measures, while effective, have raised privacy concerns, highlighting these challenges. An observational survey of 169 healthcare workers evaluated moral judgment across Non-Moral, Impersonal Moral, and Personal Moral Dilemmas, considering sociodemographic factors, employment details, pandemic experience, empathy, and job stress. The study found job stress significantly impacts moral decision-making. For Impersonal Moral Dilemmas, higher job stress-often resulting from lack of sleep or lower job security-pushes professionals towards utilitarian decisions, possibly due to diminished empathy, indicating a preference for societal benefits over individual welfare. Conversely, in Personal Moral Dilemmas involving personal connections, heightened emotional conflicts arise. A reversed pattern was observed in how job stress affects utilitarian choices based on the dilemma's nature: higher job stress leads to utilitarian choices in impersonal dilemmas, while lower job stress prompts utilitarian sacrifices of personally connected individuals in personal dilemmas. These results underscore the complex relationship between healthcare professionals' psychological well-being, empathy, and work-related stress, highlighting the ethical navigation challenges in healthcare.