Wounded Healers and Suffering Strangers: Navigating Ethical Dilemmas Together ~ Dec 5, 2020

The Bruce Wine Memorial Fund and ICP+P present a dramatic reading of the play,

Off the Map by Joan Ackermann

Presented by the Red Well Theater Group of Washington, DC

Online Zoom Webinar

3 Ethics CEs

Saturday, December 5, 2020 from 9:00 am-12:30 pm Eastern (US/Canada)

Socio-cultural-political and environmental forces in the 21^st century have converged to generate complex ethical dilemmas for the practice of psychotherapy. In 2020 the traumatic stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, cascading economic vulnerabilities, systemic inequities impacting marginalized communities, racial injustice, and polarization in American politics is expressed in our consulting spaces through dissociated silence, cautious whispers, aching grief, and rageful torment. Neither therapist nor client is immune from these stressors causing injury—moral, psychic, relational, and physical.

The seismic shift to teletherapy, in particular, has set in motion novel dilemmas for therapists and patients to navigate together. A core ethical question facing clinicians today:

How do we reconcile the competing ethical imperatives of therapist wellbeing and an
effective therapist-patient relationship with a civic duty to safeguard public health?

By definition an ethical dilemma in clinical practice reflects an underlying conflict between multiple ethical principles that require a dynamic process of resolution, rather than a solution-based application of evidence-based or best practice interventions and guidelines.

The process of resolution includes a recognition that something is amiss, information gathering to learn more, an exploration of the nature and meaning of the dilemma with stakeholders, a decision to take action, and an evaluation of that action’s effectiveness.

In this program these core concepts will be introduced:

• Ethical Standards: The utilitarian approach, the rights approach, the fairness or justice approach, the common good approach, the virtue approach.
• Ethical Principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy, justice, fidelity, and therapist self-care.
• Therapist virtues: compassion, discernment, trustworthiness, conscientiousness and integrity.
• An inclusive, process-oriented approach to resolving ethical dilemmas.

The program format features:

• Dramatic reading of the play, Off the Map, by Joan Ackermann, presented by the Red Well Theater Group.
• Commentary by the therapist/actors linking themes from the play to vignettes from their personal lives and clinical practices, as examples of working with ethical dilemmas.
• Audience members will be invited to contribute comments and questions to a discussion segment among the therapist/actors.

At the conclusion of this conference, participants will be able to:

1. Identify subjectively felt experiences that might alert the clinician that an ethical dilemma has emerged related to a client, group, or practice-as-a-whole.
2. Explain the underlying conflict of competing ethical principles as the basis for understanding ethical dilemmas in clinical practice.
3. List the marginalized others to be included as stakeholders in a collaborative process of resolving ethical dilemmas in clinical practice and beyond.
4. Name therapist self-care strategies which reflect core ethical principles of clinical practice.

PLEASE NOTE: Recording in any form of this live streaming event is NOT permitted.