Out-Of-Office Experiences:
Ethical and Clinical Considerations For Home Visits,
Celebrations, Adventure Therapy, Incidental Encounters and Other Encounters Outside the Office Walls
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GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course discusses numerous interventions that are carried out outside the office walls. They include:
Home visits for the purpose of assessment and treatment. This includes home visits with home-bound or bed-ridden clients or those who cannot get to the office for lack of organization or means of transportation or due to depression, phobia or other reasons. It has also been used by family therapists for assessment, case management and interventions in cases of child abuse and child neglect.
In-vivo exposure for treatment of phobias, which may include walking with an agoraphobic client to an open space or flying with a client who suffers from a fear a flying.
Joining clients in celebrations and rituals, such as weddings, graduations, funerals, confirmations, school plays, gallery openings.
Going outside the office on an aerobic walk with a non-compliant, depressed client, walking around the block with a restless adolescent, accompanying a client to an important medical procedure, for which she would go on her own, or making a hospital visit to an ill or dying client.
Adventure, nature or outdoor therapies, which also include vision quests, rope courses and therapeutic trapeze flying activities.
Incidental, unplanned or accidental encounters between clients and therapists in public places outside the office.
Working with clients from different ethnic cultures, may require joining American Indian clients in special rituals, attending a Hispanic or Jewish client's wedding, or making a home visit to an African American family who wants to host the therapist for a special family event.
While analytic or risk management guidelines may discourage therapists from leaving the office, humanistic, behavioral, existential, family, feminist and many other orientations support leaving the office when it is aimed to increase clinical effectiveness. The ethical and clinical complexities involved in any type of out-of-office experience are discussed, and special attention is given to issues of the standard of care, codes of ethics, risk-management and theoretical orientations. (Intermediate level course)
The course consists of two articles. The first one, Out-of-office experience: When crossing office boundaries and engaging in dual relationships are clinically beneficial and ethically sound, provides numerous case vignettes of clinical interventions that take place outside the office. The second article is an extensive review of all the out-of-office experiences listed above and discussion of the ethical and theoretical orientations, CPT, risk management and standard of care considerations.
Educational Objectives:
This course will teach psychotherapists to
Identify what is included and involved in out-of-office experiences.
Describe when out-of-office intervention can increase clinical effectiveness.
Relate ethical and standard of care considerations in out-of-office experiences.
Identify risk management considerations in out-of-office experiences.
Define the complexity with boundaries that is involved with interventions that take place outside the office.
Review the relationships between theoretical orientation and out-of-office experiences.
Course Syllabus:
Scope of out-of-office experiences
Home visits
Clinical interventions as part of treatment plan, which are not possible in the office
Attending clients' celebrations, rituals and life transitions
Incidental encounters
Outdoor or adventure therapy
Dual relationships in the community
Theoretical orientations
Boundary crossing, boundary violations and dual relationships
Confidentiality, time, participation, location and safety considerations.
Standard of care
Procedure codes (CPT)
Risk management and slippery slope argument
Out-of-office experiences as part of healthy dual relationships in the community
How out-of-office experiences can enhance therapeutic effectiveness
References
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