Navigation

  .            

Advanced Applied Ethics

Plus Certification in

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Legal Abuse Syndrome

Includes textbook and syllabus

 

Course Description and Summary

 

This powerful course immerses you into the ebb and flow of ethics issues surrounding health professionals and their patients.  Through active dramatizations you will face true cases testing the most challenging ethical issues ever to cross your path.  This course allows you to practice and study the "what ifs" in your career.  What if I get sued?  What if I get subpoenaed?  What if my patient complains about my service?  What if my spouse asks me for divorce before I go to work?  What if my patient is involved in a protracted custody battle testing all therapeutic skills and boundaries?  What if the law and the ethics conflict around an issue?  In this Course, agency, employer, federal and insurance regulations and rules are honored in the context of personal values and self-protection; all the while serving the best interests of the patients.

 

Your instructor has nearly 30 years of experience as an AAMFT Clinical Member and licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice.  She is the author of Overcoming the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome.  Karin Huffer has researched and written on the effects of ethics and legal violations on our culture.  She has researched her thesis that ethics and legal violations can precipitate a subcategory of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, legal abuse syndrome.  Karin Huffer has been a columnist for Nevada Woman Magazine, Risk Management Magazine, has published several articles, and made many radio and TV appearances discussing her groundbreaking work. This course is 12 CEU credits offering a certificate in Advanced Applied Ethics.  The participant will also emerge certified as a PTSD/LAS therapist.

 

Audience:                     Marriage and Family Therapists, Physicians, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Nurses, Nursing Home Administrators, Counselors, Psychologists.

 

   Needs Analysis:            This program is needed by any person who treats patients and is vulnerable to violation of ethical codes or laws.

                                    It fulfills the biannual requirement for ethics training for many professions. The insights, protocols, and skills respond to fear of liability and frustration felt when treatment is neutralized by repeated traumatic assaults from litigation or other stressors.

 

 

Objectives:

 

Participants will:

1. Be effective at managing intimidating accusations of ethical or legal violations including new language to define and manage fear of liability.
2. Learn guidelines for ethical introspection, for analysis of ethical codes as to their value and validity, as well as insights into the traumatic impact on patients when ethics and laws fail.
3. Learn proven skills (eight steps) for helping the ethically or legally violated patient obtain appropriate treatment to overcome the traumatic stress of betrayal.    
4. Learn how to give advice under the Americans with Disabilities Act safely within ethical boundaries along with the health professional's critical role in helping patients access the Americans with Disabilities Act.
5. Gain skills for legal savvy in the face of legal or ethical accusations, intimidation, and questioning.  Participants will be less fearful in the face of usual trickery used by the adversary including sworn testimony, powers of attorney, affidavits, advance directives, informed consent, confidentiality, and subpoenas.
6. Learn how to approach mediating a dispute involving power differential.
7. Learn how to manage your documentation to avoid legal risk for yourself and your patient.
8. Learn guidelines for being an expert witness.

 

Advanced Applied Ethics for Health Professionals

Total Course Time 12 Hours

(A question box will be available for anonymous questions)

Course Outline

Day one - 6 hours

 

Introduce objectives of Course, take questions, and point out main points for final examination (if required.)  Introduction of textbook and syllabus dovetailing treatment protocols with ethical issues. 

 

• Ethical pre reflective intuitions combined with rational data to comprise individual professional/ personal ethical stance. 

 

• Begin eight treatment steps.  Debriefing (using copyrighted graphic) in the context of ethics violations, tangible and intangible losses with experiential exercise in Dyads.

 

• Ethical Relativism and its dangers in the context of Ethical Responsibility during Guided Behavior Change.

 

• Fear Motivation in law and health care:  Polling Data Fact Sheet; "Attitudes Toward Medical Litigation." What do we really fear and what needs to be done?

 

• "Psychologists Admit Intentional Ethics Violations,"  Pennsylvania study discussed.

 

• Ethics and The Americans with Disabilities Act as applies to invisible conditions their diagnoses and symptoms. Data from two surveys will be presented. Laws, liability, litigation, and perceptions of legal system impacts ethical structure.  "Ethical/legal violations, Blaming and Public Health Risk," and  America Bar Association Survey of 1999 "Public Perceptions of American Judicial System."

 

 

 

Advanced Applied Ethics

Day two

 

• Diagnosis of PTSD/LAS resulting from ethical/legal violations.  Veterans Administration criteria Keane, Malloy, Fairbanks Subscale for Assessment of PTSD. Differential Diagnoses considering depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Alert as to false positives in testing with PTSD/LAS.

 

• Continue main points for eight steps for healing PTSD/LAS.  Power versus Conscience Continuum emphasized. Blaming, obsession, reframing, recovery, restitution, forgiveness discussed.

 

• Skills for Empowerment for the non attorney or (Until the lawyer gets there...)   Communication regarding expert witness testimony, depositions, subpoenas, powers of attorney, advance directives.  How not to add to a problem; how to greet legal matters without fear; how to protect yourself in the face of legal confrontation.           

 

•§        Video of deposition.  Discussion of communication. Rules for self protection with discussion.

 

• Video of psychologist, keeping records and their use in sworn testimony.

 

•§        Role play of expert witness testimony with worksheet and discussion.

 

•§        Introduction of true Cases for practice.

 

•§        Divide into groups practicing skills taught.

 

Summary of all major points, general questions.

Discussion of questions in anonymous box using new skills

 

Evaluation

Final Examination provided for those who need it.

Certificates awarded for Ethics CEU's and separate Certification in PTSD/LAS.

.