With funding from The Greenwall Foundation, STEPPS investigates moral stress among physicians providing frontline care for COVID-19 patients in New York City and New Orleans. Sampling physicians from diverse hospitals will enable us to assess how differences in state and local public health responses and institutional factors mediate the ways physicians respond to the crisis.

Using interviews with 40 physicians in each city, we will: (1) describe physicians’ experiences of moral stress during the pandemic; (2) assemble a conceptual framework mapping sources of moral stress in crisis and non-crisis conditions; and (3) develop and disseminate evidence-based recommendations to guide systems-level change (e.g., state- and hospital-level policies) urgently needed to mitigate and respond to moral stress during and beyond this pandemic.

With funding from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, STEPPS investigates occupational health and wellbeing among physicians providing frontline care for COVID-19 patients in Los Angeles and Miami.

Drawing on interviews with 40 physicians in each city, our specific aims are to: (1) Describe the relationships among the systems-, professional-, and institutional-level factors shaping workplace conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic and physicians’ perceptions of occupational health and wellbeing; (2) Identify systems-, professional-, institutional-, and individual-level characteristics that protect physicians’ occupational health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic; and (3) develop and disseminate evidence-based recommendations to protect physicians’ occupational health and wellbeing during normal and crisis conditions, with expert panel input.