COUC 501 Liberty University Professional Values at Workplace Exercise

Professional Values Case Study: Reading

To begin this assignment, you will need to access and read the following sources:

• The ACA Code of Ethics Preamble at: https://www.counseling.org/Resources/aca-code-of-ethics.pdf
• A Practitioner’s Guide to Ethical Decision Making by Forester-Miller and Davis at: https://www.counseling.org/docs/ethics/practitioners_guide.pdf?sfvrsn=2 (copy this link into your browser)
• Your text book – section addressing professional values/principle ethics

Read these resources, focusing on professional values/principle ethics.

Professional Values Case Study: Short Answer Exercise

After you have reviewed each resource you will access the Professional Values Case Study short answer exercise quiz. This quiz consists of 10 brief case study questions. Once you begin the assignment submission, you will have 3 hours to complete it.

Read each case study and identify the professional value that is being violated in the case study. For this assignment, there is an assumption that all of the cases will violate the principles of nonmalfecence and/or beneficence. For your answers, you will only focus on the remaining values (autonomy, fidelity, veracity and justice). Each case has one (1) primary value indicated.

After you provide the value for the case study, you will provide a rationale for your answer that is no longer than 50 words.

1. An experienced career counselor works for a community agency that covers a broad range of services to clients. Two clients come in to see the counselor. The first client is a respected member of the community and is a department head in the local government. The second client is a part time employee at a factory who has had several arrests and is well known in the community for being intoxicated in public. Both clients come to the counselor wanting career counseling. The counselor recommends a full career assessment, that involves four separate career tests, for the first client. The counselor does not administer any career tests to the second client because she knows they are expensive, time consuming, and “a waste of time” for someone with an “addiction problem.”

2. A college student comes in with an eating disorder. The client is assigned to a counselor who has experience working with college students but not eating disorders. The counselor is aware that she lacks the knowledge and skills to work effectively with a client with an eating disorder but does not inform the client that she has no experience.

3. A marriage counselor has been working with a couple for the past six months. The couple started counseling to decide whether they wanted to continue in the marriage or divorce. The counselor believes that marriage should be for life. He has helped the couple see the roots of their unhappiness in the marriage, as well as, the benefits and consequences of remaining married or divorcing. One day the couple walks in and tells the counselor they have decided to move forward with a divorce. The counselor begins to tell the couple all the reasons they should not divorce and how their choice is wrong.

4. A master’s level counseling student is feeling overwhelmed due to having a major paper. She has worked overtime for the past two weeks and her oldest child has a stomach virus, limiting the time she has to spend on researching and writing the paper. In a panic, she goes online and finds an online service that, for a small fee, will provide her sections of the paper, guaranteeing the information will not be detectable by any plagiarism program. She decides to use the service for the paper.

5. A counselor is leaving her employment at a community mental health clinic to take another job. In preparation for leaving, she tells all her clients that she will be leaving and her last date at the agency will be May 1. Two weeks before her May 1 date of departure, the counselor becomes angry at the agency and just quits, walking out, not informing her clients.

6. A counselor at a community mental health center has been seeing a client for 4 months. The client initially presented with substance abuse concerns but has not been complying with treatment goals for reducing substance abuse. The counselor’s supervisor suggests to the counselor that the client needs to enter a structured treatment program. At the client’s next appointment, the counselor tells the client that arrangements for the client to participate in the agency’s intensive outpatient program have been made for “her own good.” The client is upset and states she does not want to be in the program. The counselor tells the client, “Too bad, you’re already enrolled.”

7. Two clients have been referred to a counselor who only has one available spot. The counselor looks over the referral information of both clients. The first client has insurance that is known for paying promptly and without requiring detailed documentation. The second client has insurance as well. But his insurance is always slow at reimbursement for services and requires a detailed treatment plan and weekly phone consultations. The counselor decides to take the first client but tells the second client there is no available appointment time for at least 4 weeks.

8. A counseling intern at a community agency has six new clients assigned to her caseload. Per her supervisor’s instruction, the student schedules to see the clients one time a week for 55 minutes. The student also works a full-time job, is taking two additional courses, and is a single mother of two children under the age of five. In the first two months, the student cancelled around 30% of her client’s appointments due to other obligations and a general sense of being overwhelmed.

9. A client initially comes into counseling worried that she might be bipolar like her mother and states several times that, “If I am bipolar, it will ruin my life!” The counselor assesses the client and administers a test that also assesses for bipolar. Both the counselor’s assessment and the results show that the client is bipolar. Four weeks later, the client requests to see the results of her assessment. The counselor refuses to release the results telling the client the results were not conclusive.

10. A counselor at a community agency decides to start a group for women recovering from sexual abuse. On the first group meeting, the counselor hands out the informed consent form but rushes the members to sign the form without reviewing. The counselor reviews the benefits of group but worries reviewing risks will cause the members to feel anxious or frightened and drop out of group before they experience the benefits. She plans to review the risks on the third session.