Unexpected Poison

People go to work hoping for a reliable environment and trustworthy leadership who will provide what is needed for them to work well. This hope is true for any worker, especially those whose work entails exposure to physical or psychological hazards in the service of their community. High rates of "burnout" and psychological distress are becoming increasingly common across all professions. This book explores the impact of harmful leadership practices and workplace cultures on staff while publicly projecting an image of high ethical standing. It investigates those at the frontline of work whose expectations of organizational safety and fairness have not only been breached but betrayed.

This book describes ‘moral injury’, a new way to understand the impact of the “betrayal of what is right by someone in legitimate authority”. This interdisciplinary title presents first-person accounts of those who have experienced betrayal in the workplace and it contains reflections of those accounts from numerous angles so that readers can understand how they too may be impacted by similar experiences. Utilizing psychology, philosophy, theology, and sociology, readers are given an understanding of the latest research on moral injury so they may avoid the damaging impacts that broken workplace cultures and betrayal can have on their own lives and moral virtue. It provides signposts to strategies that move towards 'the good' by avoiding the harmful impacts of resentment and vengeance on their betrayers and, instead, it offers a holistic framework that repairs broken systems and instils hope, healing and a way to grow after the event.

Unexpected Poison: Betrayal and Moral Injury in the Workplace is a fascinating read for health and safety practitioners and any professional in a high-risk industry including aviation, medicine, military, construction, transport and engineering.