Knowledge is not Enough: Training for Ethical Competence

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Knowledge is not Enough Training for Ethical
Competence

• Cynthia De Las Fuentes, Ph.D
• Mary Willmuth, Ph.D
• Catherine Yarrow, Ph.D.
• Richard B. Weinberg, Ph.D.

APA, July 2003
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Other Workgroup Members

• Madonna Constantine, Ph.D.
• Judy Hall, Ph.D.
• Nancy Downing Hansen, Ph.D.
• Scotty Hargrove, Ph.D.
• Mary A. Jansen, Ph.D.
• Chris Loftis, M.S.
• Mona Koppel Mitnick, Esq.
• Rudy E. Vuchinich, Ph.D.

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Ethical Legal Competency

• Integral to all areas of practice and all
  activities
• Important aspect of professional development

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Mandate of Working Group Ethics Legal
Competence

• Identification important components, knowledge
  , skills, attitudes and values
• Training - critical experiences
• Assessment - across different stages

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Knowledge

• ethical/professional codes
• standards guidelines
• statutes, rules, regulations and relevant case law

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Skills

• Ability to recognize ethical and legal issues
• Ability to apply knowledge and skills to practice
• Ability to recognize and reconcile conflicts
  among relevant codes and laws

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Skills (Contd)

• Appropriately seeking information
• Consulting and offering consultation
  appropriately
• Building and participating in a collaborative,
  supportive peer network
• Raising ethical and legal issues, assertively

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Values/Attitudes

• Adopting/adapting ones own ethical
  decision-making model
• Applying the model with personal integrity and
  contextual sensitivity
• Self-assessment/Self-awareness

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Comment Courage and Ethical Conduct

• Courage may be required to act ethically
• Component of the ethics competency or general
  attribute?

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Training General Recommendations

• More discussion of
• Legal issues
• Multicultural issues
• Culture of ethics code
• More training in ethics for research
• Training Modalities Milieu, modeling,
  didactics/instruction and practice/experience

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Training Milieu, Modeling

• Milieu
• Training program itself must be consistent with
  the Code of Ethics
• Modeling of ethical behavior
• Critical
• Must be clearly seen by trainees
• All experiences in program should exemplify
  ethical behavior, encourage reflection and
  evaluation

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Training Didactics

• Introduce ethical issues early in training
• A course in ethics is necessary but not
  sufficient
• Have students read literature analyze their own
  ethical decision-making model why I do what I
  do
• Teach and model self-assessment from early in
  training

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Training Practice/experience

• Integrate throughout training
• Use cases or experiential activities of
  increasing complexity to continue refining
  ethical training
• Vignettes can be useful if different
  interpretations are discussed in vivo training
  is also valuable
• Use actual experiences as part of content for
  training in ethics

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Progression of Training

• Training should be progressive, through
  developmental steps
• early training/pre-practicum
• practicum
• internship and post-doc
• professional and lifelong learning
• No agreement on specific sequence of training

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Training Additional Recommendations

• Encourage development of peer networks and
  consultation/study groups
• Experiential training in supervision and
  ethical/legal issues in supervision

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Training Other Themes

• Normalize occurrence of ethical dilemmas as part
  of all professional activities
• Need to see beyond codification of rules

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Training Innovation Morality Genogram
Self-Awareness

• Morality dimension in internship
• how it enters into questions we ask and what we
  do
• Self awareness for trainers and students
• Morality genogram mapping
• critical incidents
• influences on moral development

Richard B. Weinberg, Ph.D.
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Ethics Legal Competency Assessment

• Formative vs summative role of trainers
• usually formative activities
• must make summative decisions
• dual role
• influenced by own perspective, moral history
• Assessment mechanism
• provide opportunity for training and growth, as
  appropriate

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Assessment

• Assess for different levels of competence at
  various points in training
• Assess for ethical competence in every course
  throughout training

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Multimodal Assessment

• Trainees discuss their response to ethical
  dilemmas
• In vivo assessment
• Critical incident methodology
• Reinforce when trainee has recognized an
  ethical/legal dilemma and acted appropriately
• Gap analysis methodology to assess progress over
  training

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Future DirectionsEthics Legal Competence

• Promote a multi-modal, developmental,
  process-based model for training and assessment
  of ethics competence
• Promote communities for ethical decision-making
• Hold a multi-stakeholder conference on training
  and assessment for this competence