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College Rules |
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Code of Conduct Preamble The psychological, social and physical welfare of the people for whom they provide services and with whom they conduct research, and the welfare of the society in which they function, are of central importance to psychologists. Four major sets of responsibilities of psychologists, and therefore the rights of clients, students, supervisees and research participants with whom psychologists work, are addressed in this Code. This Code applies not only to individual psychologists but also to companies involving psychologists. Responsibilities to Clients, Students, Supervisees and Research Participants 1 Nothing of a psychological nature should be done with, for or to clients, students, supervisees or research participants without obtaining proper informed and voluntary consent from them. This will involve being willing to explain the nature and purpose of therapy or assessment, or any other intervention, the alternatives available and any costs, as well as indicating the complications which may arise, such as the possibility of breaches of confidentiality. Communications for this purpose should use vocabulary and style suitable to the language skills of the people involved. This recommendation assumes that the clients and those in other roles have the capacity to give consent. If the client does not have this capacity (for example, is a child, developmentally disabled or suffering dementia) informed consent should be obtained from the person legally responsible for him or her. This could be a parent or a person appointed by the Guardianship Board. Withdrawal of consent should always remain possible. 2 Unless required by law, or by duty of care to the clients or others, psychologists, even in supervision, must not release information about them unless the clients specifically authorise the release, preferably in writing. Even under these circumstances, psychologists should be aware of the need to preserve as much confidentiality as possible. For example, in court, psychologists may request the judge to permit the suppression of information not relevant to the matter being decided. Psychologists may also withhold specific information from the referring agency if it has no relevance to that matter. For confidentiality with adolescent clients, judgements need to be made on the basis of their psychological development, whether they should be treated as adults or children. Computerised data bases should also be secured by the psychologists responsible. 3 The psychologists’ place of practice should provide confidentiality for clients and adequate security for their records. These records should be adequate to communicate clearly with other psychologists. 4 Psychologists must not exploit their relationship of trust with their clients, students or supervisees in any way. In particular they must not have a personal or sexual relationship with them during the professional relationship. When the professional relationship has included the provision of any form of psychotherapy in which the professional relationship was a major therapeutic factor, a sexual relationship with the clients involved should never later occur. When other kinds of professional relationship have ended, the advice of senior colleagues should be sought before beginning any other kind of relationship. Normally a period of one year should elapse before such a relationship begins. 5 Psychologists should safeguard the welfare of clients, especially during the termination of a therapeutic relationship, which can be stressful for them. 6 The autonomy of clients should always be respected by psychologists, but if a client is judged to be strongly suicidal, or homicidal, then careful analysis of the psychological costs of intervention and non-intervention need to be made, bearing in mind the duty of care to the client. In particular, the psychologists must determine whether the duties to protect or to warn take precedence over the autonomy of the client. Psychologists can best determine the appropriate professional response in consultation with senior colleagues. 7 Psychologists should also respect the ethics, gender, age, sexual preference, religion, race, culture and politics of their clients, students and research participants. If this respect is not achieved with clients, and such issues seem likely to affect the professional relationship, psychologists should be willing to refer them to a more suitable psychologist. 8 Psychologists should help clients secure second opinions, and refer, for more specialised service, those clients whose needs or requests are outside their professional competences. 9 No research should be carried out without the informed consent of the research participants or without the research proposal being approved by a properly constituted ethics committee. Responsibilities to Professional Colleagues 10 Psychologists are required to conduct themselves in their professional duties in a manner which meets the standards accepted by the body of professional psychologists. This requirement involves respecting and maintaining confidentiality for psychologists who are being investigated for professional misconduct. 11 Should a psychologist disagree with a colleague on professional issues, he or she must refrain from criticising the colleague in a manner which casts doubt on the colleague’s professional competence. This does not apply to the critical evaluation of published works, nor to expert testimony in court, nor to opinions offered in the investigation of a complaint against a psychologist. However, psychologists should be aware that laws of defamation apply to written reports concerning the work of other psychologists or other professionals. Responsibilities to the Community and to Society 12 Psychologists should not engage in misleading or deceptive advertising. 13 Psychologists should never make false or deceptive statements. 14 Psychologists should uphold the law. 15 A psychologist needs to communicate to appropriate professionals about the risks to the welfare of people who may not identify their wrongs and express them for themselves (such as children, people with developmental disability, dementia and those abused as children). 16 If a psychologist has reason to believe that a colleague is behaving unethically, or that his or her standards of practice fall substantially below acceptable standards, the failure to maintain standards should be reported to an appropriate body, such as the Complaints Committee of the Psychologists Registration Board. The colleague should also be approached in a helpful way. Responsibilities to Self 17 Psychologists are required to conduct their professional duties in a manner which meets the standards accepted by the general body of psychologists. 18 Psychologists should maintain their knowledge and practice at an acceptable level of competence, including recognition of the psychological issues involved in professional relationships, including boundaries, power differentials and transference. 19 Psychologists should also be aware of the limitations of their measurement techniques and should not attempt to conceal such limitations. These techniques should be selected according to psychometric and other scientific criteria, and administered and scored according to their manuals. Deviations from standardised administration should be noted in any report of the assessment. 20 Psychologists who see impairment of their ability to practise should withdraw from practice and seek professional help, where appropriate, for their impairment. Psychologists and Sexual Behaviour in Professional Relationships The community expectation of the professional psychologist is that a psychologist will act with utmost integrity. The community must be confident that personal boundaries will be maintained and that any person who seeks the assistance of a psychologist will not be at risk of conduct on the part of the psychologist which transgresses the highest standards of conduct in relation to those boundaries. Sexual behaviour falls into a special category of behaviour in almost every culture and in regard to psychological practice there are particular vulnerabilities here by reason of the special nature and potential intensity of the helping relationship. Sexual conduct with a person who has come for assistance brings community censure and damages the credibility of the profession, eroding thereby its effectiveness. Given the power differential in favour of the psychologist, the onus is on the psychologist to behave in a professional manner. It is never acceptable to blame the client, patient, student, supervisee, or other person who has come to a psychologist in that psychologist’s professional capacity, if a sexual relationship develops. Nor is it acceptable to seek to avoid responsibility by reason of there being an ongoing relationship even some considerable time later, nor by reference to the maturity of the other party, nor to their complicity in the sexual relationship, nor to their lack of personal complaint, nor to protestations of there having been ‘no harm done’, and so forth. A psychologist who engages in sexual conduct with a person who is presently consulting them in their professional role will be regarded as exhibiting conduct at the severest level of disapprobation in breach of all customary Codes of Ethics and Conduct, and clearly generating a well-founded judgment of professional misconduct. Further, once a professional relationship has ended, there will remain residual aspects of that relationship which point to the need for great care in regard to future sexual conduct between parties to the professional relationship. In relation to both ongoing or completed professional contact there is also a need to consider the ethical implications of sexual conduct with close friends or close relatives of the individual being offered professional contact. The rationale for the Board’s position in respect of this matter has been supported in many contexts by psychology disciplinary bodies in various jurisdictions, as by similar bodies in other allied professions such as medicine and law. That rationale expresses such points as the following: The helping relationship depends on a level of utmost trust between the parties. Whatever the state of the philosophical debate between different schools of psychology concerning matters of ‘power’ and ‘boundaries’, the parties are not equal. This is recognised also by the fact that each helping relationship will be characterised by different degrees of dependency, duration, and intensity of interpersonal involvement. Such matters will likely go to the sanction applied following a judgment of professional misconduct arising from sexual conduct. The psychologist’s role as an expert, an authority, generates a dimension of influence over and potential exploitation of those who seek assistance. In addition to psychological damage caused directly by a breach of the principle being enunciated here, exploitation within a helping relationship can cause exacerbation of psychological problems. Further, it potentially puts the person who has come for assistance beyond the reach of subsequent efforts to help by reason of the loss of trust.
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