Doing the Right Thing: Essential Ethics in Practice, Revised 1st Edition

Course overview

Social workers and mental health professionals need to be aware of ethical issues and dilemmas in their practice and follow a well-reasoned process that results in informed and insightful ethical resolutions to contemporary dilemmas. Practitioners must grapple with issues related to client autonomy, confidentiality, informed consent, and scarce resources. Careful ethical deliberation and professional competence in initiating discussions with clients about these issues are essential and required skills of helping professionals. This basic-level course is designed to address the ethical challenges encountered by the beginning practitioner as well as by professionals with advanced skills. The overarching theme of this course is that good professional practice requires an awareness of ethical issues that may arise in practice, and demands a reasoned approach toward ethical analysis, decision making, and action. This course focuses on professional values and identity and the responsibilities of social workers and other professionals in providing ethically sound care to clients. The course provides information about a practitioner's identification and resolutions of ethical dilemmas, including ethical decision making models, the influence of competing professional values on the decision making process, and required professional competencies. The codes of ethics and professional standards from the professions of social work (NASW, 2017), psychology (APA, 2017), and counseling (ACA, 2014 and AMHCA, 2015) are presented.