When What Drives You Drains You: Ethics of Self-care and Professional Boundaries (2022 Spring Ethics & Integrity Series)

Presentation Description:

Self-care is not meant to be just another item on the clinician’s “to-do” list, but it seems like that it is what it has devolved to. This presentation hopes to challenge that. It will specifically look at the ethical concerns of self-care; both when you do it and when you don’t. It will especially focus on challenges of balancing passion for the profession and personal limits protecting from burn-out or other decreases in professional performance quality.

Presenter Bio: 

Bethany Suppes, PhD, LMFT is an assistant professor, clinical director, and supervisor at Whitworth University and runs a private practice in Spokane, WA. She has completed presentations over professional ethics and sexual attraction; supervision; IFS therapy; self-care; and self-compassion, particularly its systemic applications. Her favorite self-care activities are rereading favorite novels and admiring the nature of the PNW.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the legal (WAC) and ethical (AAMFT) confines of self-care and professional boundaries

2. Identify four cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual self-care activities that apply to the audience member, at least one in each level of self-care

3. Identify 3 specific indicators of burn-out