Ethical Issues and Risk Management Strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic was a time during which many clinicians worked selflessly to be available to their clients who were struggling during the time of isolation. What we have since learned is that the practice of self-care – by those of us in the helping professions – is one of the most important ethical activities that we can engage in. The emotional cost of the work we do is immense; the need for ethical practices that support effective clinical practice while managing risks to self, clients, and agency is equally immense. This workshop will delve into what ethics, risk management, and self-care looks like for behavioral healthcare (mental health & substance use disorder) professionals. This highly interactive and experiential session will look at ethics through the lens of professional practice, including trauma (PTSD, moral injury, vicarious trauma), self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and healing. Ethical standards of practice and competency related to scope of practice will be integrated into this workshop. 

Learning Objectives:

• Define personal versus professional codes of ethics, dual relationships, use of self-disclosure, and confidentiality within the realm of hybrid services.
• Explore our understanding of standards of practice and scope of practice
• Define professional versus personal self-care and its influence on our practices, self-disclosure, and confidentiality 
• Describe the emotional costs of the work we engage in – both overt and covert – and how those costs influence our ethical judgment and risk management practices.
• Explain what we mean by ethics related to self-compassion, self-forgiveness, emotional healing, and emotional capital 
• Define the ethical concern associated with vicarious trauma, moral injury, professional burnout, and emotional exhaustion
• Explore risk management tools and activities that promote healthy clinical practices, including various biopsychosocial-spiritual-emotional strategies that support and promote macro and micro professional practices