Moral Injury: From Distress to Hope and Purpose
Moral Injury is the lasting distress that can follow taking part in, witnessing, or being unable to prevent something that violates your deeply held sense of right and wrong. It can also follow betrayal by the leaders or institutions you depend on. In the helping professions, it often shows up when a clinician knows what a patient or client needs and is blocked from providing it by policy, resources, or the system around them. It is often mislabeled as burnout, and responses built for burnout tend to miss it.
This 4-hour live virtual workshop is for social workers, counselors, nurses, and other helping professionals in high-stakes settings, including hospitals, chronic illness care, hospice and palliative care, and community agencies. Participants will learn to tell moral injury apart from burnout and compassion fatigue, separate individual distress from system-driven harm, and practice facilitating a debrief for coworkers after a difficult case. The workshop also makes room for the clinician’s own moral injury, with practical strategies for protecting empathy and rebuilding a sense of purpose and hope.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
Describe how moral injury differs from burnout in etiology, presentation, and appropriate intervention.
Apply a micro vs. macro framework to distinguish individually-resolvable distress from systemically-driven moral injury in healthcare, social service and community settings.
Distinguish the facilitator’s role in a coworker debrief from the therapist’s role in individual treatment, including when to refer a colleague for individual support.
Design a basic escalation pathway (peer support → facilitated debrief → individual referral) appropriate to their own workplace or consulting context.
Identify their own emotional responses to high-acuity caseloads
Overall Workshop Goals
- Establish a shared clinical vocabulary
- Build a concrete facilitation skill
- Address the clinician’s own moral injury as well as their clients’
By the end of this workshop, participants will have practiced facilitating a coworker debrief and identified their own next step for applying today’s frameworks in their workplace or practice.
Workshop Hours
Saturday, December 5, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM Central | 4 Hours (CE Pending) | Presenter: Kristin Malaer, LCSW-S, hosted by JST Institute
Registration Fee
Early Bird Fee: $75.00 (Register by November 15th, 2026)
Regular Fee: $100.00 (Register Between November 16th and December 4th, 2026)
Student Fee: $50.00 (Must show proof of status with a student card if requested)
GROUP Discount of 15% available for group registration of 5 or more. Please email training@jstinstitute.com for more information.
Cancellation
Full refund minus $30.00 cancellation fee until November 15th, 2026.
50% refund between November 16th and December 4th, 2026.
No refund on December 5th and thereafter.
Zoom Log-in
Zoom log-in information will be provided to the email you registered with. If you have not received an email confirmation with the Zoom log-in within 48 hours of registering, please email carolinetremblay@jstinstitute.com.
CEU
Workshop presenter is an approved social work supervisor with the Behavioral Health Executive Council. The workshop qualifies for 4 CEUs under the 50 percent rule in Texas for licensed social workers in Texas. A Certificate of Attendance confirming 4 hours of continuing education will be provided.
Kristin Malaer, MSW, LCSW-S
Kristin Malaer, MSW, LCSW-S, is a licensed clinical social worker in Texas and owner of Malaer Mental Health Services, a telehealth practice focused on chronic illness, organ transplant, and caregiver burden. She spent 10 years as a heart transplant social worker. Kristin is a former board member of the Society for Transplant Social Workers (STSW), where she chaired the LVAD and heart transplant committees, and currently co-chairs the Social Work and Allied Mental Health Professionals Committee of the International Consortium of Circulatory Assist Clinicians (ICCAC). She has presented at conferences including STSW, AAHFN and the Houston Shock Symposium.