Professional Ethics and Legal Standards
What you must know
Ethical practice rests on principles - autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, fidelity, and veracity - and on enforceable codes, laws, and regulations. Know the elements of informed consent (competence, information, voluntariness, documentation). Understand confidentiality and its limits: danger to self or others, abuse reporting, court orders, and client waiver. Know mandated reporting duties for child, elder, and dependent-adult abuse. Understand duty to protect (the Tarasoff line of cases) as distinct from confidentiality, and that specific duties vary by jurisdiction. Learn boundary and multiple-relationship rules, competence limits, record-keeping, HIPAA-style privacy, and the ethical decision-making models that move from identifying the problem to consulting, evaluating, and documenting.
Traps in questions
- "Confidentiality is absolute" - never the right answer.
- Duty to warn vs. duty to protect. Many jurisdictions require protective action (hospitalization, notification of authorities, or warning) rather than warning alone; the safest answer follows the most protective, jurisdiction-appropriate step.
- Breaking confidentiality without a defensible trigger. Concern, curiosity, or family pressure are not triggers.
- Ignoring consultation and documentation in ethical dilemmas.
- Assuming one state's law applies everywhere.
Worked rule of thumb
When an ethics stem presents a dilemma, choose the answer that is consultative, documented, and least restrictive while protecting safety. Sequence: identify the issue, check law and code, consult a supervisor or ethics board, act, document, and follow up. If an option says "do nothing and monitor" in a clear safety situation, it is wrong. When in doubt: consult, document, and protect.