What are ‘moral experiences?’
Moral experience is considered as a person’s perception that what he or she values is present or disregarded in everyday life.
Research into moral experience helps us better understand the collective, interpersonal, or subjective activities and processes of humanitarian projects experienced by the community that
reflect or conflict with what they value.
This reading list brings together key publications that use moral experience to explore humanitarian care, palliative decision-making, and research during crisis. Together, they offer a practical way to think about staff experience, ethical strain, empathy, guidelines, and the support humanitarian practitioners need in difficult settings
| Hunt, M. R., & Carnevale, F. A. (2011). Moral experience: A framework for bioethics research. Journal of Medical Ethics, 37(11), 658–662. 10.1136/jme.2010.039008 | This is a foundational article for understanding moral experience. It explains why bioethics should pay attention not only to formal ethical problems, but also to how people experience values in everyday life. Use this piece to introduce the concept, define your terms, and frame discussions of humanitarian ethics around lived experience rather than abstract principle alone. |
| Yantzi, R., Hadiuzzaman, M., Gupta, P. S., Lamrous, A., Pringle, J., Schwartz, L., Hossain, P., Kizito, D., & Burza, S. (2022). “Their suffering also plagues us”: moral experiences of MSF staff providing end-of-life care in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. MSF Science Portal conference presentation, published 12 May 2022. DOI: 10.57740/rbj5-y139. | The presentation at MSF Scientific Days examined how MSF staff understood and delivered palliative care for people facing end of life in a displacement context, and it highlights the value of attending to empathy, suffering, and staff experience in program design. Use this resource to understand how moral experiences are relevant not only to ethics discussions, but also to humanitarian service design and staff support. |
| Yantzi, R., Hadiuzzaman, M., Gupta, P. S., Lamrous, A., Richardson, K., Pringle, J., Schwartz, L., Hossain, P., Kizito, D., & Burza, S. (2023). “We decide according to the protocol”: Humanitarian healthcare workers’ moral experiences of palliative care-related decision-making in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 38(S1). DOI: 10.1017/S1049023X23002960. | This article is especially useful for thinking about how guidelines, policies, and hierarchy shape ethical decision-making. Use this article to prompt discussion about how protocols support care, when they constrain it, and how local staff use them in decision-making. |
| Yantzi, R., Hunt, M., Moll, S., Wahoush, O., Amir, T., Yadav, E., & Schwartz, L. (2026). “We’re all just trying to do right by our patients”: a qualitative study of healthcare and research personnel’s moral experiences of engaging with COVID-19 research during the first wave of the pandemic. BMC Health Services Research, 26, 275. DOI: 10.1186/s12913-026-14050-y. | This paper expands the idea of moral experience beyond direct patient care to the intersection of research and clinical work during COVID-19. The study found that participants were trying to do right by patients while navigating limited evidence, pressure for speed, ethical standards, advocacy, and the burdens of conducting research in a crisis. Use this article to expand ideas about how moral experience can help explain the tensions humanitarian practitioners face when care, research, and urgency collide. |
| Yantzi, R., Burza, S., Hunt, M., et al. (2026). “Their suffering also plagues us”: a narrative ethnographic exploration of humanitarian healthcare workers’ moral experiences of providing pediatric palliative care in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. International Journal of Humanitarian Action, 11, 13. DOI: 10.1186/s41018-026-00194-3. | This article develops the humanitarian palliative care discussion further through narrative ethnography. The study used participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and document analysis to explore empathy and related Bangla concepts in palliative care, and it argues that education, mentorship, and locally grounded concepts of empathy can support better humanitarian care. Use this article to highlight that moral experience is not only about distress; it is also about empathy, relationship-building, and practical forms of care that fit the local context. |
HUMANITARIAN HEALTH ETHICS 