Continuing Competence and Ethics
Continuing competence
Renewal generally requires demonstrating ongoing competence, often through continuing education, professional activity, or other approved mechanisms. Know the concepts: the purpose is maintaining and updating skills, not merely accumulating hours; activities should relate to practice; and records of completion should be retained in case of audit. Traps include assuming any course counts, miscounting hours, or missing deadlines for attestation.
Ethics as a decision framework
Ethical questions reward a structured approach: identify the stakeholders, the relevant duties (beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, justice, veracity), and the least intrusive action that protects the client. When duties conflict, client welfare generally prevails, and the licensee should use available resources - supervisor, ethics consult, board guidance - before acting.
Common traps
- Choosing the option that protects the therapist's convenience or reputation over client welfare.
- Assuming that because something is legal it is therefore ethical, or vice versa.
- Overlooking informed consent in favor of "doing what's best" without the client's agreement.
- Failing to document an ethical decision and the reasoning behind it.
Rule of thumb
When two answers both seem defensible, prefer the one that (1) puts client safety and autonomy first, (2) stays within scope and competence, and (3) documents the reasoning. That ordering resolves most ethics items.
Worked example
A client lacks decisional capacity and family members disagree about goals. The best answer seeks the authorized decision-maker and the client's previously expressed wishes, documents the process, and proceeds with consent from the proper representative - not the therapist's own preference for the "clinically optimal" plan.