Ethical Principles
Counseling Relationship
Confidentiality and Privacy
Professional Responsibility
Professional Relationships
100
It is developing a client's ability to be self-directing within therapy and all aspects of life. Practitioners are responsible for providing clients an informed consent, offer clients the freedom to voluntarily participate in counseling, and protect client privacy.
What is autonomy?
100
This is when clients like Joey, who is 12, cannot give his own permission to participate in counseling without a parent. He can only give his assent in addition to his parent or guardians consent.
What is Informed Consent in the Counseling Relationship: Inability to Give Consent?
100
This is when Dr. Sugaroo told her client that all of the information she disclosed during therapy would be kept private, but with a few exceptions.
What is Respecting Client Rights: Explanation of Limitations?
100
This is when Marcy, a Masters level licensed therapist, made sure to tell her client that she had attained her degree, license, and specialized in grief counseling. She had to correct her client who kept calling her "Dr." to just call her "Marcy".
What is Professional Qualifications: Accurate Representation?
100
This occurred when Amy, a clinician who specialized in eating disorder, called upon her colleagues in the medical and nutrition departments to gain a broader perspective of options to serve and best treat her client.
What is Relationships with Colleagues, Employers, and Employees: Forming Relationships?
200
This required practitioners to be fair (not equal) to all clients, by appreciating differences between people, committed to equality of opportunity, and avoid discrimination against others.
What is justice?
200
This is when clinicians, like Dr. Mayo, have to avoid counseling people close to them, like husbands who ask for a brief counseling session after their favorite basketball team tanks in the playoffs.
What is Prohibited Non-counseling Roles and Relationships: Friends or Family Members?
200
This is when instances occur where a client, for example, a teenage client, expresses the urge to self-harm, and the therapist finds it important to tell this to the teen's parents. Before they do, however, the therapist asks the client how he or she would like to talk with his or her parents, what to disclose to them, what the therapist should say, and what the teenage client should say.
What is Exceptions: Minimal disclosure?
200
This is when Harod routinely assesses his client's progress by asking them how they think they are meeting their goals, and he regularly checks in with his supervisor to verify treatment effectiveness.
What is Professional Competence: Monitor Effectiveness?
200
This happened when Ronald, a therapist, congratulated his colleague Shana for being a whistleblower and reporting their boss for dishonest financial business decisions.
What is Relationships with Colleagues, Employers, and Employees: Protection from Punitive Action?
300
This would be avoiding providing services to a client when you, as the clinician, are severely ill; you would be responsible for not sexually, financially, or emotionally exploiting your client in any way.
What is non-maleficence?
300
This is when a clinician might be asked by a client to visit their dying grandmother in the hospital with them; in weighing the pros and the cons, the clinician would have to make sure the client was not expecting them to counsel their grandmother. Services only apply to the client and in the context of therapeutic services only. In deciding to go, the clinician documents this in his or her case notes for precaution.
What is Managing and Maintaining Boundaries and Professional Relationships: Extending Counseling Boundaries and Documenting Boundary Extension?
300
This is important to consider when a chronically ill client who is just waiting to die in Hospice wants to end their life sooner than later, and asks you to keep this secret from their family, whom you are also working through the grieving process with.
What is Exceptions: Confidentiality Regarding End-of-Life Decisions?
300
This occurred when a therapist wanted to adhere to a client's request to perform EMDR (eye-movement desensitization reprocessing), even though the therapist did not have formal training in this procedure.
What is Treatment Modalities: Harmful Practices?
300
This is when Deanne listened carefully as her colleague, another psychologist, discussed the treatment effectiveness of DBT on certain client conditions, even though she did not see herself integrating this into her own practice. Even so, Deanne recommended this colleague to some clients who had problems that could be effectively treated with this model.
What is Relationships with Colleagues, Employers, and Employees: Different Approaches?
400
This is applying all of the ethical principles to the clinician to carry out as a means of developing personally and professionally. It requires accountability on the part of the clinician practicing with clients.
What is self-respect?
400
This is what happened when therapist Joanne Stein originally saw a couple for counseling. Her clients Jolene and Jarod ended up deciding to stay together, but Jared wanted to also see Joanne individually to address individual issues, too. Joanne had to refer both parties to see other therapists individually, while continuing to see them together as a couple.
What is Multiple Clients?
400
This is referring to working with other mental health professionals, like psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, and social workers, regarding the client's treatment plan and options, to which the client agrees you can discuss their case. It is especially important that you discuss this client's information in a closed room, where other employees and providers not part of this client's care cannot hear.
What is Information Shared with Others:Interdisciplinary Teams and Confidential Settings?
400
This is when Harriet, a licensed counselor who also sold essential oils as part of her practice, received positive statements from clients who boasted about the helpfulness of her therapeutic techniques coupled with essential oils. Harriet was pleased that she received additional training on essential oils because of how much it boosted her business.
What is Advertising and Soliciting Clients: Statements by Others and Products and Training Advertisements?
400
This is the responsibility of clinical director, Dorane Sortooth, to interview and ultimately decide on hiring new therapists; he recently hired an exceptional clinician with 20 years of experience in the local clinic's area of expertise.
What is Relationships with Colleagues, Employers, and Employees: Personnel Selection and Assignment?
500
This is a commitment the clinician has to provide competent practice with the client in order to preserve their best interests.
What is beneficence?
500
This is when Mike, a therapist at a trauma-focused center, received a referral from a client her was most uncomfortable with given how their values and beliefs starkly differed from his and he had to decide whether to see this client. Not only that, but this client also asked Mike to help them with issues pertaining to parenting, something that Mike was not competently trained to help with; he definitely considered a referral now.
What is Termination and Referral: Values within Termination and Referral and Competence within Termination and Referral?
500
This is when one of your clients asks to see what diagnosis and other information you have included in their record as a result of your assessment; based on your evaluation, you think it important for the client to also follow-up with a local psychiatrist and ask for the client to sign a written release to send their records to this other treatment collaborator.
What is Records and Documentation: Assistance with Records and Disclosure or Transfer?
500
This is when Steve, a mental health clinician, was very adamant about protecting his wheelchair bound colleague from discrimination; he even reported a sexual act of misconduct made towards his colleague to their supervisor.
What is Nondiscrimination and Public Responsibility: Sexual Harassment?
500
This occurs when Sallie Mae, a clinical ethics expert, frequently receives calls from therapists about how to handle certain situations and reviews their rights and responsibilities with them, as well as her own as the consultant.
What is Relationships with Colleagues, Employers, and Employees: Informed Consent in Formal Consultation?
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