Professional liability and risk management.

Ethical Considerations for Military Clinical Psychologists: A Review of Selected Literature

“…More challenging is the need to then resume my normal social and professional relationship with this person after the session is over. (p. 77) Clinical psychologists and professional governing bodies take boundary violations very seriously (Bennett, Bryant, VandenBos & Greenwood, 1990;Pope & Vetter, 1992). For example, in a report by the APA (1999), 19% of its membership terminations were for nonsexual boundary violations.…”

Hide-and-Seek or Show-and-Tell? Emerging issues of Informed Consent

“…The knowledgeable and ethical practitioner should know who can give "substitute consent" or how to obtain consent "after the fact" if an emergency precludes conventional timing (cf. Bennett et al, 1990, andHaas &Malouf, 1989, for more thorough treatment of these situations from a practical perspective). In the next section, I highlight several issues that demand thought and professional judgment from the clinician as he or she decides what the prospective client should be told.…”

“…This information would be that which a reasonable person would want to know. The specifics as they are customarily considered will be discussed in more detail later; for the present, suffice it to say that the prospective patient should be provided comprehensible information about the risks and benefits of treatment, risks and benefits of alternatives to treatment, and qualifications of the provider (Bennett et al, 1990). In addition, the professional must assess the prospective patient's competence or ability to act autonomously.…”

“…However, some of the variation in informed consent procedures results from practitioners' confusion about the issues or from passive resistance to these new demands. Individual preferences and defenses notwithstanding, however, there are evolving standards for obtaining informed consent for psychotherapeutic treatment (e.g., Bennett, Bryant, VandenBos, & Greenwood, 1990;Botkin & Nietzel, 1987;Faden, Walters, & Beauchamp, 1984;Haas & Malouf, 1989). This article is an attempt to clarify the principles underlying informed consent, to discuss briefly some recent developments in informed consent, and to suggest some practical methods of obtaining truly informed consent from patients without undermining the original purpose of offering mental health services-providing expert help to those in need.…”

The Role of Aspirational Ethics and Licensing Laws in the Practice of Neurofeedback

“…Some reasons why the neurofeedback practitioner should know the laws that pertain to his or her practice activities, include: (1) It is a way of minimizing risk by being in compliance, (2) It provides a mechanism for integrating information from the law into daily clinical practice, and (3) It helps avoid confusion in terms of what is expected (Bennett, Bryant, Vanden Bos, & Greenwood, 1990). Laws are accompanied by regulations and by a means of enforcing both the law and regulations.…”