Setting Ethical Limits: For Caring and Competent Professionals
Course #77042 - $36 -
- Participation Instructions
- Review the course material online or in print.
- Complete the course evaluation.
- Review your Transcript to view and print your Certificate of Completion. Your date of completion will be the date (Pacific Time) the course was electronically submitted for credit, with no exceptions. Partial credit is not available.
Without proper self-care, boundaries, and awareness (transference), therapists become vulnerable to burnout and vicarious traumatization. This can result in a risk of therapeutic effectiveness, loss of trust with clients, and possible ethical crossings or violations. This course supports professionals practicing competence, while utilizing self-care and boundaries to minimize burnout while practicing compassion for the clients that they serve.
This course is designed for social workers, counselors, and marriage and family therapists in all practice settings.
The purpose of this course is to educate helping professionals on how to provide compassionate care ethically to those they serve without causing burnout.
Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:
- Define professional competence.
- Describe the importance of cultural competence.
- Outline components of the therapeutic relationship.
- Define empathy and describe the difference between empathy and sympathy.
- Identify compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout and describe their impact on mental health professionals.
- Define transference and countertransference and discuss their implications for the mental health professional.
- Identify the functions of professional boundaries in the therapeutic relationship and multiple relationships.
- Discuss the guidance on giving and receiving gifts provided by professional ethics codes.
- Discuss the legal and ethical considerations of providing distance therapy.
Lisa Hutchison, LMHC, has more than 20 years of experience providing individual and group counseling with adults. She specifically focuses on teaching assertiveness, stress management, and boundary setting for empathic helpers. Ms. Hutchison graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, with a Master’s degree in education for mental health counseling.
Contributing faculty, Lisa Hutchison, LMHC, has disclosed no relevant financial relationship with any product manufacturer or service provider mentioned.
Alice Yick Flanagan, PhD, MSW
Margaret Donohue, PhD
The division planners have disclosed no relevant financial relationship with any product manufacturer or service provider mentioned.
Sarah Campbell
The Director of Development and Academic Affairs has disclosed no relevant financial relationship with any product manufacturer or service provider mentioned.
The purpose of NetCE is to provide challenging curricula to assist healthcare professionals to raise their levels of expertise while fulfilling their continuing education requirements, thereby improving the quality of healthcare.
Our contributing faculty members have taken care to ensure that the information and recommendations are accurate and compatible with the standards generally accepted at the time of publication. The publisher disclaims any liability, loss or damage incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents. Participants are cautioned about the potential risk of using limited knowledge when integrating new techniques into practice.
It is the policy of NetCE not to accept commercial support. Furthermore, commercial interests are prohibited from distributing or providing access to this activity to learners.
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The role of implicit biases on healthcare outcomes has become a concern, as there is some evidence that implicit biases contribute to health disparities, professionals' attitudes toward and interactions with patients, quality of care, diagnoses, and treatment decisions. This may produce differences in help-seeking, diagnoses, and ultimately treatments and interventions. Implicit biases may also unwittingly produce professional behaviors, attitudes, and interactions that reduce patients' trust and comfort with their provider, leading to earlier termination of visits and/or reduced adherence and follow-up. Disadvantaged groups are marginalized in the healthcare system and vulnerable on multiple levels; health professionals' implicit biases can further exacerbate these existing disadvantages.
Interventions or strategies designed to reduce implicit bias may be categorized as change-based or control-based. Change-based interventions focus on reducing or changing cognitive associations underlying implicit biases. These interventions might include challenging stereotypes. Conversely, control-based interventions involve reducing the effects of the implicit bias on the individual's behaviors. These strategies include increasing awareness of biased thoughts and responses. The two types of interventions are not mutually exclusive and may be used synergistically.