PSY570 SNHU Discussion 4 Professional Etiquette In Child Development

PSY570 SNHU Discussion 4 Professional Etiquette In Child Development

Choose one of the four areas of psychology of most interest to you (CHILD DEVELOPMENT) and answer the following questions as they relate to your chosen field:

What is professional etiquette? What results in a breakdown of etiquette between or among professionals?

Explain “risky individuals” and some of the best tools for dealing with a difficult associate in a risky situation. How does the inability to deal effectively in high-risk situations lead to the creation of an ethical dilemma?

To complete this assignment, review the Discussion Rubric document (attached).

Please also reply with one-two paragraphs to the following two discussion posts regarding this same topic:

STUDENT ONE:

The area of psychology that is most interesting to me is child development. Specifically, I am interested in working with children with developmental and behavioral disabilities. It is very common for children with disabilities to have “teams” of professionals working with and for them. Members of the team can include treatment plan coordinators, educational plan coordinators, occupational therapists, speech therapists, clinicians, and behavioral health professionals. Professional etiquette is this area involves maintaining client confidentiality, not overstepping your role on the child’s team, and communicating changes in a timely matter to other member’s of the child’s treatment team.

If professional etiquette is not observed several things can happen, but ultimately the client or child will not receive adequate or appropriate services. An example of this would be a breakdown in communication between an occupational therapist and a treatment plan coordinator. The coordinator may include or leave out a goal on the child’s treatment plan based on their opinion of the client’s progress, but the OT may have a more accurate perspective of how the child is doing.

Another example of how a client’s treatment can be impacted by lack of professional etiquette is if a provider attempts to provide services outside of their area of expertise or practice. An example of this would be a BHP attempting to provide clinical therapy services to a client. The BHP’s lack of training could ultimately have a negative impact on client care.

A “risky individual” in this scenario would be any member of the client’s team who tends to attempt to provide services outside of their expertise. The team member’s inability to effectively preform their duties (and only their duties) in a crisis situation, like a behavioral crisis, could have a huge negative impact on client progress. An example of this might be a speech therapist attempting to help a client transition to their parent’s car at the end of the day. The therapist will most likely not have the same restraint training that the client’s BHP would have, and would be ill-equipped to deal with a behavioral crisis like bolting. If the client did bolt, the ethical concern arises: should the speech therapist restrain the client even though they are not certified, or should they allow the client to run into the parking lot, potentially into danger?

The largest “tool” for dealing with risky individuals would be to have clear rules relating to team member’s duties. It may be helpful to have team members sign agreements stating both their expectations and limitations when interacting with the client. Another effective tool for risky individuals may be to correct behavior that lacks professional etiquette in the moment, or with a personal improvement plan.

STUDENT TWO:

Although my main interest is in industrial psychology, it is not one of the four main areas of psychology. Before being interest in industrial psych, I was always interested in cognitive psychology and how we solved problems, processed our thoughts and our creative thinking. These concepts of cognitive psychology can be easily applied to industrial psychology and how cognition can influence the workplace. HR is one of the positions an industrial psychologist could hold within the workplace. They can use the concepts of human cognition is how they train their employees to increase job satisfaction. Professional etiquette would entail maintaining employees confidentiality about claims they have filed, upholding HIPPA laws, and providing employees with proper training. If proper etiquette is not upheld, employees will not trust that their claims are not being kept confidential and their workplace productivity and satisfaction will suffer.

Risky individuals who do not uphold professional etiquette provide training in which they are not an expert in or careless with employees’ confidential information. To deal with this, the director of HR needs to be extremely clear about how to handle employee information and what protocol is when that information is shared with the wrong people. They should also be clear about who within the HR department provides with training to employees based on their qualifications. If professional etiquette lacks and risky individuals are not dealt with in the proper manner, it can lead to the ethical dilemma of impeding the training process of the employee, leading to self-doubt and lesser job satisfaction.