Deck 17: Law, Ethics, and the Regulation of Professions

Question 1

Professions are regulated

A) to correct the imbalance in knowledge and power between professionals and their clients or patients
B) to enhance the prestige of the professions by allowing them to advertise
C) very strictly and in ways that make it easy for the public to gain redress
D) because doctors are untrustworthy and need external motivation to fulfill their moral duties

Answer 1

to correct the imbalance in knowledge and power between professionals and their clients or patients

Question 2

Professions are regulated by means of

A) state laws governing licensed or certified practitioners
B) ethical codes promulgated and enforced by professional associations
C) malpractice suits when professionals violate their duty of care to the client or patient
D) all of the above

Answer 2

all of the above

Question 3

The state's power to establish regulations and enforce them derives from

A) the separation of powers in the constitution
B) the state's police power enabling the state to establish regulation of all professions concerned with health
C) the constraints of due process and the state's social and economic interests
D) the states parens patriae powers enabling the state to care for the welfare of all of its people

Answer 3

the state's police power enabling the state to establish regulation of all professions concerned with health

Question 4

Licensing and certification

A) are two ways of saying the same thing
B) are similar because the law doesn't restrict the use of the title to those who are licensed or certified
C) differ because a licensed profession has a near monopoly over certain areas of practice
D) differ because practice is defined in licensing laws, but never in certification laws

Question 5

Advantages of being a licensed or certified practitioner include

A) that professionals cannot count on being paid by insurance companies where unlicensed or non-certified practitioners are more confident of receiving reimbursement for services
B) immunity from state disciplinary proceedings which apply only to the unlicensed or non-certified
C) making rules that open the field to all who wish to practice by keeping qualifications low
D) that confidential communication between a licensed professional and his or her client or patient is legally privileged when privilege is explicitly granted in a state statute

Question 6

State licensing and certification laws

A) ensure the public that licensed or certified practitioners have met standards of education and practice that make them eligible to practice and that they are subject to losing their license or certification for professional misconduct
B) specify that only non-licensed or certified practitioners are subject to the state's disciplinary procedure
C) are written so that they are very "user friendly" for clients or patients of licensed or certified practitioners to bring complaints against the practitioner.
D) according to its critics are entirely too specific to apply to the variety in actual practice

Question 7

A licensed or certified practitioner can be subject to a disciplinary proceeding

A) for any reason whatsoever that a client or patient chooses to complain about
B) for professional misconduct defined by acts specified in the state's licensing or certification law
C) but he or she is not entitled to an attorney or an adversarial hearing in the disciplinary process even if the violation is serious
D) but it can be taken lightly because it is not stressful for the practitioner or for the person who brings the complaint

Question 8

The complaint process is

A) easy for the person making the complaint because his or her privacy will be protected and the complaint may be made anonymously
B) easy to understand and it is easy to find out how to file a complaint
C) difficult for the complainant because he or she might have to reveal embarrassing details of his or her life
D) easy for the complainant because it would be unethical for the defense psychologist use the person's diagnosis of borderline personality disorder as a defense against complaints of sexual misconduct

Question 9

An expert witness testifying in a courtroom

A) usually has no immunity from suit for the court testimony
B) is usually very cautious and balanced in giving the pros and the cons when testifying in a custody case
C) is safe from suit if he or she has the recognized qualifications for a custody evaluator and uses professionally recognized standard examining procedures
D) has immunity for suit because of his or her courtroom testimony, but does not have immunity from a complaint to a state licensing board for disciplinary action by the board

Question 10

The Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association was

A) developed empirically by analyzing a very large number of "critical incidents" that members believed exemplified unethical practices
B) developed by studying philosophical treatises on ethics and using fundamental principles culled from those works
C) "written in stone" because it was so difficult to develop that it cannot be amended
D) written by a small group of scholars and failed to represent the interests of practitioners

Question 11

The Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association was

A) meant to be a guide to honorable professional conduct, not an enforceable "law"
B) based on the "right-duty" relationship, which means that when a right is established others have a duty to respect the right
C) written by a group of scholars as a philosophical exercise and didn't reflect broader membership interests and concerns
D) written narrowly primarily to define the ethical relationships of clinical psychologists to their clients

Question 12

The Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association contains

A) as a core principle respect for client autonomy which means that a psychologist has no duty to try to inform people with little competence of what he or she is doing and why
B) as a core principle that of beneficence which includes a fiduciary duty to work for the benefit of clients and to observe the principle of nonmaleficence ( first do no harm)
C) a provision that requires obtaining informed consent in very few situations and only with fully competent clients
D) a provision that says psychologists should always try to overrule a prospective patient's rejection of treatment if the psychologist believes the treatment would be helpful

Question 13

The Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association (APA)is enforceable against

A) anyone who practices as a psychologist or a counselor
B) only those who practice on the internet and do not have face-to-face contact
C) any member of the APA
D) only those members who are also licensed by a state government

Question 14

A committee of the American Psychological Association reviewed ethical issues related to the participation of psychologists in interrogation of prisoners as in Guantanomo Bay and concluded

A) that no psychologist should participate in interrogations under any circumstances
B) the APA code of ethics and its principles do not apply in those circumstances because the psychologist is not working with someone who could be called a client.
C) that because the subject of the interrogation is a prisoner, psychologists could ethically consult about interrogation techniques which involve torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
D) that psychologists could participate in interrogation activities related to national security, but they needed to be alert to ethical issues that might arise and if they witness torture or inhumane or degrading treatment, they should report the incident to appropriate authorities

Question 15

One method for enforcing professional standards of care is a malpractice suit

A) which can be brought in state court and the injured party could recover money damages for any injury that was proved at trial
B) which can be brought by anyone, even a friend of a client who believes the psychologist was not treating her friend properly
C) which is brought very often against psychologists and social workers employed in public agencies
D) which is easy to prove because there are so many different methods of treatment and it is easy to show that the psychologist was negligent

Question 16

Sexual relationships with clients

A) is prohibited by the ethical code of APA
B) is a breach of the fiduciary duty to put the client's interests first
C) is a breach of the APA ethical code even if the relationship begins after the cessation of therapy
D) all of the above

Question 17

When clients in therapy recover memories of childhood abuse sexual abuse

A) the memories are invariably false and induced by therapists using memory recovery techniques
B) the earlier failure to remember the incidents may be attributed by some theorists to a psychological process of dissociation or repression
C) the recovered memories of events that occurred in the first year of life are plausible because psychologists believe memory functions like a tape recorder
D) therapists regularly seek corroboration of the recovered memories by interviewing other family members or looking for records of reports of child abuse to child protective service

Question 18

A 24 year old adult's alleged recovery in treatment of memories of abuse occurring at age four as a basis for a suit against parents

A) will not be allowed to go forward in a state with a 6 year statute of limitations running from the date of injury even if there is reliable and verifiable evidence of the allegedly recovered memories
B) may be allowed in a state that has changed the statute of limitations to allow a suit to go forward from the time of discovery of the injury (i.e. the recovered memory of abuse) not the time of occurrence of the injury
C) may be disallowed on the basis of a statute of limitations if the court finds that the patient had consciously remembered the alleged abuse from childhood onward and did not just recover the memories in treatment
D) all of the above

Question 19

The false memory debate in the courts

A) was basically ignored by psychologists interested in memory because the phenomena could not really be studied in the laboratory
B) did not interest psychologists because they would not be admitted as expert witnesses in malpractice suits involving allegedly false memories against mental health professionals who were defendants
C) stimulated an outpouring of research on whether false memories could be induced, whether forgotten memories could be recovered without distortion, and whether false memories can be reliably distinguished from true memories
D) led to research methods which over came questions of external validity, or the applicability of the research to the issues that arose in courts in the recovered memory debate

Question 20

The Ramona case about a woman who sued her father in part because of recovered memories of abuse, and her father then sued her therapists was unusual because

A) the father, Gary Ramona, was allowed to sue as a third party not in treatment
B) there was a battle of experts on the recovered memory issue
C) the therapist discouraged confrontation between Gary and his daughter
D) Holly reported what seemed like fantastic memories

Question 21

In the suit against his daughter's therapists, the jury in the Gary Ramona case

A) found in favor of the therapists
B) found that the therapists planted false memories in Holly's mind or reinforced the false memories and awarded Gary $500,000 in damages
C) that the therapists were not negligent because other practitioners also did memory recovery work
D) had a non-unanimous (9-3) verdict that was unconstitutional

Question 22

Holly Ramona's law suit against Gary Ramona was dismissed because

A) she didn't have any experts willing to testify about the validity of recovered memories
B) a child can't sue a parent for things that happened in early childhood
C) her alleged memories were recovered after the use of a hypnotic drug and were not considered reliable under California law
D) she had confronted him long before the trial in the therapists' office and that was a violation of the adversary process

Question 23

Successful law suits against therapists about their responsibility and possible negligence in inducing recovered memories cases

A) had no effect on practice in the field which went on much as it had before all the law suits
B) had the effect of making therapists more cautious about the possible adverse effects of recovered memory therapy
C) had no effect on the number of false memory law suits which continued to be filed at a high rate
D) showed that the theory that law suits could affect practice by making practitioners more careful was false

Question 24

A working group within APA was established in order to sum up knowledge in the field of recovered memory and to resolve controversies by reviewing the literature. The working group concluded:

A) that child sexual abuse is a pervasive and complex problem in America and the problem in the past had not been acknowledged
B) that most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them
C) it is possible for pseudo memories to be constructed, and for memories that have been forgotten for a long time to be remembered
D) all of the above

Question 25

What are the ways in which the practice of psychology is regulated?

Question 26

What are the underlying ethical principles in the practice of clinical psychology?

Question 27

Why is a sexual relationship between a therapist and patient considered wrongful?

Question 28

What does the research indicate about the prevalence (or incidence) of sexual relationships between mental health professionals and their patients?

Question 29

There is presently a requirement of a two year period of time between the termination of treatment and permission to have a sexual relationship with a former patient? Is that sufficient time? Why or why not? What alternatives would you suggest? Why?