Mindful Ethics: Enhancing Decision-Making in Clinical Practice

Course overview

Clinical treatment presents a unique and challenging array of ethical issues. This evidence based workshop addresses, explores, and offers strategies for ethical decision making, cultural sensitivity, and clinician self-care. The fast pace of daily life and clinical work challenge clinicians in maintaining a reflective approach towards ethical concerns. Yet, awareness and reflection are, in each of these ethical dimensions, key to responsiveness. This workshop provides a space for reviewing current evidence, reflecting upon ethical concerns, engaging in discussions, and building the inner reserves essential to therapist well-being. The complexity of ethical dilemmas elicits strong feelings and often involves conflicting perspectives. Keen awareness, allowing the identification and acknowledgement of related thoughts and feelings, enhances ethical decision making efficacy. A mindful narrative approach facilitates the delineation between regret that an ethical decision requires setting limits that may be construed as harsh from those that may suggest that there is an ethical breach. This experiential workshop provides a clear process for exploring professional ethical dilemmas and practice in applying this process. The therapist's well-being directly impacts clinical outcomes and client satisfaction. Across disciplines, ethical codes recognize that this well-being constitutes a salient aspect of beneficence and client care. Given the intensity of clinical work, wellness strategies are especially critical. Contemplative approaches, practiced in session and at home, buffer practitioners from burnout that would compromise therapeutic benefits. During the workshop, participants will review the evidence linking clinician self-care with positive clinical outcomes, engage in mindfulness practices designed to enhance caregivers' compassion and resiliency, and take home detailed handouts instructing these approaches. Equitable client treatment irrespective of race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation is an ethical responsibility requiring the clinician's attunement to their personal identifications, beliefs, historical perspectives, and early cultural and familial messages. Exploration and discussion of these elements will further the use of the self in therapy, enhance cultural sensitivity, and deepen the therapeutic dialogue. Join Debra, a seasoned and sought after presenter, in exploring ethics through discussion, video clips, and small group work. Leave the seminar feeling renewed and with new tools to ready for application.