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

Course overview

This Ethics course updates clinicians working with adults, children and families in private or group practices, and specifically, practitioners located in health and mental healthcare settings, and practitioners whose clients interact with healthcare/critical healthcare systems, in major 3 areas: 1) Updated Codes of Ethics (NASW, 2018; AMHCA, 2015, and AAM&FT, 2015), focus heavily on technology and electronic communications between professional and clients in the areas of: personal boundaries, safeguarding those when using electronic communications, plus documentation, storage, and transfer of records, and practice across legal borders. 2) Informing practitioners about a new Federal statute, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), effective January 2018, affecting liability concerns by practitioners with websites accessed by clients with visual/auditory limitations, a timely compliance issue that parallels updated Ethics Codes. 3) Highlights of major changes to Chapter 765, Florida's Health Care Advance Directive Act (October 1, 2015) opens communication between future patients and their appointed representatives, assigned new roles to physicians and hospitals, plus, includes for the first time, healthcare surrogate appointments for minors. Given the ever-changing healthcare treatment environment, practitioners delivering services in medical/mental health facilities, as well as others practicing with adults, families, and children interacting with treatment facility personnel, are obligated to remain a current, updated knowledge base to ensure ethical practice and legal compliance. Course contents explore ethics, bioethics, assessment tools and models to prepare clinicians to quickly identify and target delivery of needed services. The course concludes with a case study (casuistry) illustrating ethical/bioethical dilemmas.