I don't know what to do!: Ethical Dilemmas and Professional Accountability in Healthcare Settings

Course overview

The current healthcare treatment environment requires practitioners serving adults, children, and family patients/clients in medical/mental health facilities, to maintain a current, updated knowledge base to deliver ethical professional practice and legally comply with existing laws. This Ethics course updates clinicians working with adults, children and families receiving health and mental health care in 3 major areas: 1) Recent Codes of Ethics (NASW, 2018; AMHCA, 2015, and AAM&FT, 2015) that focus heavily on technology and telehealth, and electronic communications between professional and clients. Areas of emphasis include: personal boundaries, safeguards when using electronic communications, documentation, storage, and transfer of records, and practice across legal borders; 2) A new Federal statute, effective January 2018, that heightens practitioner website concerns to ensure access by clients with visual/auditory limitations; compliance Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is timely and parallels updated Codes of Ethics concerning use of technology in service delivery; 3) major changes in Chapter 765, Florida's Health Care Advance Directive Act (October 1, 2015) opens communication between future patients and appointed representatives, assigns new roles to physicians and hospitals, and includes, for the first time, healthcare surrogate appointments for minors. Course content combines ethics and bioethics with assessment tools and models to prepare clinicians to quickly identify and target delivery of needed services. A case study illustrates applied ethical/bioethical dilemmas and models during ethical case assessment.