Preventing Medical Errors in Mental Health Care

Course overview

Research has shown that suicide and a lack of appropriate resources are two of the reasons that medical errors occur in mental health treatment. Studying these mistakes, along with learning how to prevent them, will increase competency and assist in establishing the standards of care for better outcomes. Included in this course are the types of "medical" errors that occur and strategies to avoid them in psychotherapy. Common scenarios will be integrated that look at ways to avoid improper diagnosis, breaches of privacy and confidentiality, and boundary violations. Strategies for ethical and legal responses to sexual misconduct, managing dangerous clients and mandated reporting will be presented along with the challenges of using technology and how to avoid them, including social media, email, text messages, and smartphones. This course satisfies the requirement of the Florida law.