PSY 650 Week 2 Reply To Tracy Davis Discussion Setting Boundaries When Working with Clients
In your responses, evaluate the recommendations suggested by your peer. State whether you agree or disagree with your peer’s recommendation to the doctor on how to proceed. Suggest other ethical implications your peer may not have considered in this case. What follow-up questions might you ask your peer to aid in the ethical assessment of the case? In addition to the suggestions provided by your peer, what recommendations might you make to the doctor so that he or she might avoid these types of dilemmas in the future? What additions or changes might you make to the policy or policies suggested by your peer? (PLEASE TRACY DAVIS POST BELOW)
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Tracy Davis Post
Setting Boundaries When Working with Clients
Dr. Arnold is a clinical psychologist, and she mainly deals with teens and adolescents who are mainly in the juvenile system. Recently, she got a client who has a history of aggression, angry outburst, destructive behavior, and cyberstalking. The psychologist decided to input the client’s information online to gather more details. She was primarily concerned about her safety and well-being.
One of the ethical issues encountered in this case is observing client’s information without their informed consent. Irrespective of whether it is in the physical environment or online sphere, it is unethical to observe clients without their knowledge. Another ethical concern is the inability to trust clients. Dr. Arnold went ahead to google the client’s details because she could not trust the information she got from the client. The primary step in any counseling or treatment plan is to establish trust such that the client can confide in the psychologist, and the psychologist can also be trusted to keep the information private. Trust is what supports patient-doctor relationships (Asay & Lal, 2014). Lastly, the information obtained from online sources might affects the psychologist’s decisions making abilities. On the negative side, she might not be able to offer the best treatment plan to the client.
Dr. Arnold should not gather any information from the client’s social network page. However, if she feels like this is really important in her treatment decisions, she should acquire informed consent from the client. The client should be aware that the psychologist is gathering information from his social profile. Additionally, the psychologist should consult the patient on whether the information is correct or not (Harris & Robinson Kurpius, 2014). Sometimes, it is common that social network profiles do not tell who we really are.
APA Ethical Principles and Recommendations
Under the APA regulation, principle 3.08 Exploitative Relationships requires that psychologists should not exploit individuals over whom they have supervisory power (American Psychological Association, 2010). Obtaining information from the social network profile without the client’s information means that the psychologist has violated the patient’s privacy rights. As explained above, principle 3.10 Informed Consent will also be violated.
To avoid such problems in the future, the psychologist should learn to build stable patient-doctor relationships with her clients. In this case, she will be able to obtain all information she needs without having to access their social network profiles. The information provided by clients is more reliable as compared to gathering details online. It is also important to develop an internet/social media policy that would guide the psychologists on the limits of using and obtaining information from client’s profiles. The background point is that all details should be obtained from the client; however, if there is a need to source more details from online sources, informed consent should be obtained.
References
American Psychological Association. (2010). Standard 3: Human relations (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=6
Asay, P. A., & Lal, A. ( 2014). Who’s Googled whom? Trainees’ internet and online social networking experiences, behaviors, and attitudes with clients and supervisors. Training and Education in Professional Psychology 8(2), 105-111. doi: 10.1037/tep0000035
Harris, S. E., & Robinson Kurpius, S. E. (2014). Social networking and professional ethics: Client searches, informed consent, and disclosure. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 45(1), 11– 19. doi: 10.1037/a0033478
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