Emergency Coverage of Your Practice: Practical and Ethical Considerations

PRESENTER: Melinda Salzman

Category 1 | 6 Ethics CEUs (two sessions) - must attend both sessions to get credit -- when you register you are signing up and paying for both sessions

DESCRIPTION: 

This is one workshop broken into two sessions: Friday, September 27 and Friday, October 18.  To receive the full 6 credits you must attend both sessions.

If you suddenly were to become incapacitated, due to injury, illness or death, who would contact your clients? Which details of your condition would you want your clients to know and who should tell them? What arrangements would need to be made for your clients and your place of work?

Just as it is important for an individual to write a will to protect personal assets and provide for his or her dependents, it is also prudent for a clinician to prepare for an untimely or unanticipated inability to carry out their functions at work. The purpose of this course is to help clinicians anticipate the needs of their clients and their business or the organization where they work, should such an emergency arise. Participants will identify and recruit individuals who could step in if needed. Between the two meetings, you will begin writing instructions for your “professional executors,” covering topics such as how to contact your current clients, gain access to and retain your treatment records, and oversee billing and banking.

Teaching modalities will include discussion, reading and a writing assignment. In drafting this document, clinicians typically encounter a number of ancillary tasks they must perform, such as copying keys and shredding records. The process can be both tedious and time-consuming. To assist participants in completing and distributing their emergency instructions, the class will meet for two sessions, to provide structure, support and an opportunity to problem solve together. Participants will read some short articles. The class will meet for two three-hour sessions.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Identify and describe legal and ethical issues pertaining to an unplanned interruption in the clinician’s practice
2. Address ethical principles regarding confidentiality in informing patients of the interruption
3. Apply ethical principles in selecting individuals to carry out necessary clinical and business tasks
4. Apply records retention requirements as mandated by the therapist’s jurisdiction
5. Recruit suitable individuals to carry out necessary clinical and business tasks in a professional manner
6. Draft instructions which spell out procedures these individuals are to follow and provide detailed descriptions of how to find needed information