Psychologists Ethical Issues - Coursework Example

Running Head: Mandatory Checks on Psychologists’ Accounts in Social Media Name Lecturer Date Every profession has an ethical code of conduct. Somers, (2001) purports that the code provides for the way members will execute their duties without their rights being infringed or them infringing those of others. Ramsey, (2006) too observes that everybody in a given profession is expected to act according to his/her code which is known as professional code of conduct. A psychologist is in this accord a professional who engages people showing up or referred to him in therapeutic sessions on different areas of life. Counselling or providing therapeutic sessions is a very delicate subject and involves the handling of very critical information about people’s lives. A breach of this information may be detrimental to the clients’ personal lives. With the coming of social networks, many people have immersed themselves in these networks. Psychologists also have not been left behind in this immersion, they need to connect with others and share information. Some organizations of psychologists feel that the information they share in the social networks should be scrutinized by the organizations’ watchdogs. This paper embarks on defining what a profession is and what it entails. Furthermore, it will show how scrutinizing of psychologists’ social network accounts is unethical. A profession according to Hodson & Sullivan (2008) involves extensive training which is intellectual in its character. The services of a profession are geared towards the common good of the society. Those in any profession therefore possess autonomy of high degree in making their decisions on their job. They are considered the authority in that given field, for example, a doctor’s advice cannot be challenged by an engineer. They also have to go through a certification process that is usually erected by a state to undertake specific tasks as well as provide defined services. This bars them from performing any service. A teacher, for example, cannot perform as doctor and as a nurse unless he/she has attained the due qualifications in the three fields. The professionals are exclusively given a legal right for offering the services they offer unless that legal right is taken from them. These professionals are organized in societies like the Australian Psychological Society (APS), the Australian Health Practitioners Registration Agency (AHPRA) and so on. These societies define the ethical codes for governing the members. These characteristics come according to different degrees. Some occupations carry with themselves more degree of definition than others. Having defined what a profession entails, it is also important to differentiate two things that have to be clarified in this discussion. These are: personal integrity and the professional conduct. Personal integrity according Palmer (2010) is the ability to have acceptance, honour and trust that come without any enforcement by any authority or supervision. In other words, integrity points towards self honesty and personal responsibility. Palmer (2010) explains that it is an easy task to defend one’s actions than examining them honestly. Integrity therefore calls for admission of one’s actions requires courage to take responsibility. An act that is done in a hidden manner different from one’s feelings as well as one’s beliefs is pretence (Palmer, 2010). Pretence therefore means a mere compliance without any internalization of a value. Having this in mind, one now is faced with another question; what is professional conduct? Professional conduct is a defined behaviour. A defined behaviour is guided by ethical norms. Usually, the norms are set in a way that is in the benefit of the profession of the clients as well as the professionals. As mentioned above, professionals are organized into groups or societies that define the norms or codes of conduct. The admission of the presence of codes brings in the idea of policing of ranks and sanctioning of members who violate the given codes. This means that a professional has to conform to these rules and accept all that they define regardless of whether he agrees with what they propose or not. The basic codes for most professionals are; serving the best interests of a client. According to Pompian (2012), any client will be served according to his/her needs. The professional has in no way any authority to decide what the client’s interests are. To this due, a professional can only disregard a clients request if it violates the standards of that very profession. A person proposing the removal of an organ for sale for example will make a doctor think twice on the act unless it is provided for in a state’s law. Secondly, a professional, according to Chaudhry et al (2010) has to make sure he protects the public. To protect the public means ensuring that the public is protected from any adverse harms resulting from an act or direction by the professional out of carelessness. Environmental health is very important. Health professionals in this field should protect the public by ensuring restaurants and land are used well. Moreover, they should monitor the quality of air, water, and even use of pesticides and emission of toxic substances in the environment as Perlino (2006) advises. Another obligation of a profession is confidentiality. He/she has to preserve the confidentiality of a client. Confidentiality involves the safeguarding of a client’s privacy (APS, 2013). Unless the material shared in a therapeutic session has harmful consequences if executed by the client, the privacy should be retained. The harmful consequences are also referred to as extreme cases. If a client is a wanted criminal and comes for a therapeutic session and confesses his/her behaviour and police are seeking that person, it is the duty of the professional to disclose the information to them. It is also important to distance oneself from any conflict of interest. A conflict of interest results from a situation tending towards corrupting of the judgment of a professional making him act in the way that does not serve the client to his/her best. A pharmacist working for a particular company should not be allowed to advise the government on the best drugs for the public. This is because there can arise a conflict of interest in trying to propose the same drugs of the company he works for to the public. Finally, Garman et al (2006) report that one has to avoid acts that are malicious towards the other members working with him/her in a given profession. If a client has been dealing with two professionals, he/she has to let it be known to the first one. A professional should not undermine another in order to win away the other’s clients. Discussed above are integrity and professional code of conduct. They raise the question of the relationship between them. Is integrity the same thing as professional conduct or is one contained in the other? To answer this question, one has to consider integrity as the most basic thing that a person should have before acting professionally. However, this is only done to a certain extent. Since integrity calls for personal responsibility and honesty, professional conduct would find it easier to append itself on a self responsible individual. Actually, According to the Australian Psychological Society (2007), the professional code of various nations is built upon the respect of human rights and dignity, propriety and integrity. Integrity therefore is a basic value where professional code is meant to function conveniently. The APS (2007) observes that integrity is a reflection of the psychologists’ needs to exhibit a character that is good. Furthermore, a high level of intrinsic trust in their profession as well as the relationships is acknowledged. Moreover, this code should have impact on the psychologists’ conduct in regard to their reputation and that of their profession. Since integrity is one of the core values where professional codes are defined, does it mean that a person who merely complies with a given professional code is not effective? This seems to be the most immediate and urgent conclusion. However, in an article by Edgar & Pattison (2011), they suggest that traditionally integrity was seen in the moral disposition of an individual. This moral motivation as they suggest is dangerous because it may easily degenerate to dogmatism. In this case therefore, it is important to encourage the fostering of reflective integrity (Edgar & Pattison, 2011). Professionals should not be seen as expressing mere compliance but exerting a reflective integrity which is needed in their work. Seeing them otherwise reduces them to actors which is unpalatable. With the advent of the digital technology and the founding of social media all over the world, many people have flocked into them. People find the social network ideal places for communicating with their friends as well as sharing ideas. Psychologists have found an ideal place for reaching their clients instead of making the time-consuming follow-ups or making clients show up for re-examinations. The Australian Psychological Society (2013) has found it well important to define the ways in which the psychologists interact with the technologies. Kolmes (2012) discusses some reasons why psychologists would need with social media in a wise way. She argues that some would use social media for marketing. This is done in websites that they run. Some sites like Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, among others are a place for marketing their professional practices. These engagements in the social media encourage various clients to contact them. Moreover, through these sites they can have other practitioners refer clients to them. In addition, psychologists engage in off-duty that is, participating in web interactions by commenting on other people’s statuses where they will be noticed or make impressions. In these participations, the psychologists who comment on friends’ postings may easily interfere with client details. This is because they can easily share excessive details that are supposed to be held in discretion. They may also wrongly consult people with questionable competence. In some cases it may be breaching the code of conduct (Kolmes, 2012). In such cases it may be infringing on the rights of clients. Kolme, (2012) also sees the internet as a place for additional clinical practice where one gets to know the progress of clients. She also notes that one can provide telemental care through the social media to clients who lack such professionals in their localities like transgender clients. She however says it is limited because one cannot observe little physiological shifts like tears, flushing and so on in clients. While appreciating Kolme’s insight into the future of psychology and social media, it is good to look into the issue of having mandatory checks on psychologists’ social media accounts. The intention of this move is to ensure that the code of conduct in the social media is well guarded and sanity maintained among the psychologists. The first argument for this check is to maintain integrity among the psychologists in their profession. However, in this case, it is good to define what kind of integrity is being referred here. It is very clear that if one is controlled the chances of compliance to a given set of rules is sure. However, if integrity is to be maintained, it should come from within the individual. Traditionally, as Edgar & Pattison (2011) have claimed, moral disposition of an individual is considered by many as the indication of integrity. However, should a psychologist behave always as if he/she is in office? It cannot be possible. The only thing as he can do as it has been observed above is to make sure that the values are lived reflectively (Edgar & Pattison, 2011). And what is reflective living of a value? It is a living by which a person is capable of internalizing a defined conduct such that throughout the career life, he/she will not violate them deliberately or assume them to be meaningless. If integrity is reduced to moral disposition (Edgar & Pattison, 2011), the outcome will be a prohibitive and terminative attitude that will develop among the observers. A terminative and prohibitive attitude is an attitude that is condemnatory. A simple example of such attitude will be a disagreement between a psychologist and his wife where one gets injured in a scuffle and files a divorce. A person with a condemnatory attitude will immediately opt for whistle-blowing to have the psychologist suspended. Reasoning out with such a person will receive the counterargument that this psychologist does not understand the nature of his career. In other words the dogmatism mentioned by Edgar & Pattison (2011) will be the measure of the psychologist’s integrity. On the same note, it is important to look at a psychologist who has a social media account. The things he/she can do include marketing, connecting with friends and administering of services as Kolme (2012) mentions. What can therefore be expected to be found in a psychologist’s social media account is record of the communications made in form of chat messages, video calls, and audio-visual information in form of music and videos. On top of all that there will be a list of friends and several other applications incorporated in the account. The main reason of all these is to ensure personal entertainment, communication with friends, and even the provision of pro bono, voluntary services (APS, 2013). Scrutinizing of a psychologists account will mean just one thing; making thorough check of the information that has been accumulated over time from the preceding check or scrutiny. The Australian Psychological Society guide on confidentiality of records states that records kept should be adequately maintained safe from the beginning of professional relationship to the end. Moreover, the psychologists are to manage the confidentiality of the files belonging to clients even when they have ceased practising or have transferred their practice from psychology. They should have the professional will to keep the records even after death of a client (APS, 2013). This means that the psychologist has total accountability and any explanations are owed him on those records as stated by the American Psychological Association (2007). Scrutinizing the information by anybody else means that a person is aware of the ethical together with the legal standards concerning the confidentiality of client’s information (APA, 2007). Another thing to be considered in proposing a mandatory check on psychologists’ accounts is the aim for the check. There are two implications in this. These are censorship as well as selection. Censorship is done by the policing agents while selection is both by these agents and the psychologist himself/herself. Censorship confused with selection may be detrimental. While censorship is invoked when a provision is violated, selection is guided by Altruism and integrity guided by reciprocity as Gintis et al (2003) have observed. If the societies are to have mandatory checks, then that is motivated by censorship and it is a violation of the psychologists’ privacy in disguise of well-intentioned protection of clients. It should be applied only to clients who have breached a given provision in the guidelines. Owing to this fact, mandatory checks on accounts becomes, as a matter of fact unacceptable. Selection on the other hand is based on altruism and integrity. A society, wishing to maintain a good image among clients can only choose the best for them. The best is defined in the professional conduct. A psychologist therefore, bound by the code will look for the best ways of maintaining that conduct for two things: first, the preservation of the good name of the society, and second, the endeavour to offer the best to the clients for his/her professional survival. This, according to Edgar & Pattison (2011) will be a combination of professional integrity and personal integrity. This urges for the immediate acceptance that selection forms a conscience which informs psychologists as they interact with clients in the social media such that they maintain sanity and a professional conduct. This automatically forbids the psychologist any ulterior motive of careless use of his/her account in social media, and protecting it as much as possible. As observed above, the psychologist has a duty towards the satisfaction of the clients in his profession by utilizing the most recent and convenient means available. The use of social media is one of these means. Establishing a mandatory check on the accounts in social media is a good idea. However, as observed above, it would be like forbidding the development of the psychologist’s profession. In fact, the most urgent thing that could be put in place should be the collaboration with the social media authorities to erect apps suitable for psychologists only, enhancing security and nurturing psychological development. References Top of Form Bottom of Form American Psychological Association, (2007). Record keeping guidelines. American Psychologist, 62, 993-1003. Australian Psychological Society Ltd (2013). Guidelines on confidentiality, 22-26 Australian Psychological Society Ltd, (2013). Guidelines for providing psychological services and products using the internet and telecommunications technologies, 54-65. Australian Psychological Society Ltd, (2013). Guidelines on co-ordinated disaster response, pro bono, or voluntary psychological services, 27-33. Chaudhry, H.J., Rhyne, J., Cain F.E., Young, A., Crane, M., Bush, F. (2010). Journal of Medical Regulation. Maintenance of Licensure: Protecting the public, promoting quality health care 1, 1-8. Edgar, A., Pattison, A. (2011). Nursing Philosophy. Integrity and the moral complexity of professional practice. Birmingham, UK. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Garman, A. N., Evans, R., Krause, M. K., & Anfossi, J. (2006). Professionalism. Journal of healthcare management/American College of Healthcare Executives, 51(4), 219. Gintis, H., Bowles, S., Boyd, R., & Fehr, E. (2003). Explaining altruistic behavior in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24(3), 153-172. Hodson, R., & Sullivan, T. A. (2008). The social organization of work. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Kolmes, K. (2012). American Psychological Association. Social media in the future of professional psychology. doi: 1037/a0028678. Palmer, H. (2013). Avatar Journal. The sixth pillar of enlightenment. Westmonte Dr, Stars Edge International. Perlino, C.M. (2006). American Public Health Association. The public health workforce shortage: Left unchecked, will we be protected: Washington. Pompian, M. M. (2012). Behavioral finance and investor types: Managing behavior to make better investment decisions. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Ramsey, R. D. (2006). Lead, follow, or get out of the way: How to be a more effective leader in today's schools. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin Press. Somers, M. J. (2001). Ethical codes of conduct and organizational context: A study of the relationship between codes of conduct, employee behavior and organizational values. Journal of Business Ethics, 30(2), 185-195. Read More

Having defined what a profession entails, it is also important to differentiate two things that have to be clarified in this discussion. These are: personal integrity and the professional conduct. Personal integrity according Palmer (2010) is the ability to have acceptance, honour and trust that come without any enforcement by any authority or supervision. In other words, integrity points towards self honesty and personal responsibility. Palmer (2010) explains that it is an easy task to defend one’s actions than examining them honestly.

Integrity therefore calls for admission of one’s actions requires courage to take responsibility. An act that is done in a hidden manner different from one’s feelings as well as one’s beliefs is pretence (Palmer, 2010). Pretence therefore means a mere compliance without any internalization of a value. Having this in mind, one now is faced with another question; what is professional conduct? Professional conduct is a defined behaviour. A defined behaviour is guided by ethical norms. Usually, the norms are set in a way that is in the benefit of the profession of the clients as well as the professionals.

As mentioned above, professionals are organized into groups or societies that define the norms or codes of conduct. The admission of the presence of codes brings in the idea of policing of ranks and sanctioning of members who violate the given codes. This means that a professional has to conform to these rules and accept all that they define regardless of whether he agrees with what they propose or not. The basic codes for most professionals are; serving the best interests of a client. According to Pompian (2012), any client will be served according to his/her needs.

The professional has in no way any authority to decide what the client’s interests are. To this due, a professional can only disregard a clients request if it violates the standards of that very profession. A person proposing the removal of an organ for sale for example will make a doctor think twice on the act unless it is provided for in a state’s law. Secondly, a professional, according to Chaudhry et al (2010) has to make sure he protects the public. To protect the public means ensuring that the public is protected from any adverse harms resulting from an act or direction by the professional out of carelessness.

Environmental health is very important. Health professionals in this field should protect the public by ensuring restaurants and land are used well. Moreover, they should monitor the quality of air, water, and even use of pesticides and emission of toxic substances in the environment as Perlino (2006) advises. Another obligation of a profession is confidentiality. He/she has to preserve the confidentiality of a client. Confidentiality involves the safeguarding of a client’s privacy (APS, 2013).

Unless the material shared in a therapeutic session has harmful consequences if executed by the client, the privacy should be retained. The harmful consequences are also referred to as extreme cases. If a client is a wanted criminal and comes for a therapeutic session and confesses his/her behaviour and police are seeking that person, it is the duty of the professional to disclose the information to them. It is also important to distance oneself from any conflict of interest. A conflict of interest results from a situation tending towards corrupting of the judgment of a professional making him act in the way that does not serve the client to his/her best.

A pharmacist working for a particular company should not be allowed to advise the government on the best drugs for the public. This is because there can arise a conflict of interest in trying to propose the same drugs of the company he works for to the public. Finally, Garman et al (2006) report that one has to avoid acts that are malicious towards the other members working with him/her in a given profession. If a client has been dealing with two professionals, he/she has to let it be known to the first one.

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