Course:DHYG400/GROUP D Assignment
I've started a new page with just the summary stuff Amy has done... THanks so much! And my comments... I look forward to working more with everyone on this!
Group Nicole, Amy, CHristine, Rosie, Willena, Marianne
Please paste your interview under your name.
Willena
AD is a physiotherapist specializing in osteopathy. I spoke to her this afternoon so I thought I would summarize our conversation while it was still fresh. She has treated me periodically over the last three years for problems resulting from my MVA so I didn’t want to take notes, but tried to keep it informal. If you have any questions please let me know!
What guidelines, if any, are put in place by your profession to help you if you are experiencing an ethical dilemma?
Physiotherapists have code of ethics with both their association and college. The Ontario Physiotherapy Assocation (OPA) has a code of ethics including, integrity, professionalism, quality in services, innovation and research, advocacy, accountability, and effective communications. The College of physiotherapists of Ontario (CPO) has a similar code of ethics protecting the public; this code includes respect, excellence, autonomy, well being, communication, collaboration, advocacy, honest, and integrity.
Since she is also an osteopath she belongs to the Ontario Association of Osteopaths. But osteopaths are not a regulated health profession so their treatment is not monitored and an osteopath could be practicing without the proper training.
To whom would you go to when you experience an ethical dilemma?
AD would first go to the association with an ethical dilemma and then to the college. But she relies primarily on her own ethical judgment and that of experianced colleagues.
Can you think of an ethical dilemma that you experienced, and explain how you dealt with the situation?
AD did not really want to talk about this. She did briefly discuss that she was brought to the discipline committee once ten years ago. A client had filed a compliant against her because she had terminated his treatment. She didn’t feel like they were making any progress and did not want to continue treatment… And then she didn’t want to elaborate any more on this case.
Because AD practicing both as a physiotherapist and an osteopath she said she does have to be cautious that she is utilizes all the physiotherapist techniques before proceeding to the osteopath techniques. Because she works in the community as a physiotherapist she must educate and get permission from those clients before using osteopathy techniques and explain the difference between physiotherapy and osteopathy. Because she is a specialized physiothepist she pays a higher fee to belong to the OPA along with having private special malpractice insurance for her osteopathy treatments.
Why are ethics important to your profession?
As a health professional she thinks that it is important to be trust worthy and honest keeping objective measurements in the records to show them their progress.
What are some common ethical issues that arise in your profession?
As an osteopath does not have a college monitoring and regulating their treatment she has come across some situations where records are not being kept according to her (physiotherapist) standards. When looking at some of the charts you can’t see the changes that have occurred. As long as the client is happy this isn’t a problem, but the records would not support the clinician if a complaint were filed.
She also has difficulty working with motor vehicle insurance companies because she is afraid they will interpret her reports incorrectly. When interviewing her she talked about how the CPO is always fighting for the public when working with insurance companies as they are trying to limit the treatment available for motor vehicle accident (MVA) victims to use.
She also discussed how frustrated she gets when members of health professions treat clients un-necessarily for their own monetary reasons. She shares my frustration has this is especially occurring in MVA cases.
Are you familiar with all the ethics in your professions code of conduct?
Yes, she knows the ethics found in her physiotherapist code of conduct. But would have difficultly listing them on the spot.
Do you feel that your health care professionals work together in the community to increase its building capacity?
She feels the professionals she works with in the community work together efficacy; these professionals include caseworkers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists and more. Currently, clients are only able to have twelve physiotherapy treatments or fifteen if you really stress the need she feels that this is not always sufficient. But this is a problem created by insufficient health care funds.
http://www.opa.on.ca/opa_vision.shtml
http://www.osteopathyontario.com/
If you want the code of ethics from the CPO I have it on file
Amy Interviewee: COMMERCIAL LITIGATION LAWYER @ SISKINDS LLP
1. What guidelines, if any, are put in place by your profession to help you if you are experiencing an ethical dilemma?
Rules of professional conduct that we are required to follow or else we get disbarred. Or you can contact Law society of Upper Canada (hotline for lawyer issues)
2. To whom would you go to when you experience an ethical dilemma? Senior partners or senior practitioners in the firm or senior practitioners in the community.
3. Can you think of an ethical dilemma that you experienced, and explain how you dealt with the situation?
A client approached me about setting up a scheme to fraudulently to convey assets from one of his corporations to another in order to avoid paying a judgement against his company. I contacted two senior partners @ my firm and I contact the law society hotline for advice.
4. Why are ethics important to your profession? Because in my profession the trust in the community is important in order to ensure the integrity of my profession, the law society has created ethic guidelines, if not followed will result in disbarment.
5. What would you change about your profession’s ethics? I am quite happy with my profession's ethics, our guidelines have evolved over the last century.
6. Do you feel comfortable in dealing with a situation in which ethics have been compromised? Yes, I feel very comfortable, i am well rehearsed.
7. What are some common ethical issues that arise in your profession? Client's asking us to do things that are illegal or unethical.
Ensuring that you are always truthful and not misleading the courts.
8. Does your current setting of employment have similar code of ethics to your regulating profession? Yes, we have an ethics committee (senior practitioners) which follow the same guidelines, no differences.
Marianne
RESEARCH ENGINEER at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto
1. What guidelines, if any, are put in place by your profession to help you if you are experiencing an ethical dilemma?
There are basically two things that I follow regarding ethics. There is an extensive set of guidelines and rules about being a professional engineer that govern virtually every situation that I could end up in. I am an engineer, but in order to become a licensed professional engineer I will have to write an ethics exam sometime in the next couple of years. In addition, being a researcher and doing research on live human subjects, there is an ethical component to the design of our research experiments that must be considered. Any risk to test subjects must be minimal or justified by the potential benefit of the research. There are research ethics boards that are associated with every university and every research group that are there to guide ethical decisions.
2. To whom would you go to when you experience an ethical dilemma? It depends a lot on the ethical dilemma. Sometimes there is a conflict of interest that must be declared out in the open. The nature of the research subjects must be fully disclosed to the research ethics boards. More privately, I hope that I could go to one of my peers or my direct supervisor about an ethical dilemma.
3. Can you think of an ethical dilemma that you experienced, and explain how you dealt with the situation?
I don’t know that I have ever really had an ethical dilemma with my work. If I have, I can't really think of one.
Regarding my work. hmmm....
Okay well, recently at my work we interviewed and hired a research coordinator. One of my good friends from queens interviewed for the job and they were ready to hire her until they got another application at the last minute and interviewed him. Then I was asked what I thought about him and I said that I thought that he would be fine, but that I didn’t think I could give an impartial opinion because they were about to hire my friend if it wasn’t for this guy. So there was a conflict of interest and I could have used my position and my expertise to discredit the guy but I declared the conflict of interest to my boss and gave pretty much a non-opinion about the guy that they ended up hiring. Turns out I should have voiced an opinion about this guy because he is a bit of a wanker.
4. Why are ethics important to your profession?
There needs to be accountability of engineers because we have a title that people trust. A lot of our credibility and our value come from being part of a group of individuals that are accountable and that validate the trust that is put in them. It is a self-licensing and self-policing profession, and it needs to protect our good name so that individuals do not spoil it for the group. We need to take care of the public trust and understand the weight behind our work and our recommendations.
With regards to the research ethics, it is important to have an impartial and independent research ethics board so that research can be done on test subjects without harming them. In order to continue doing research on live human subjects, these subjects need to be comfortable volunteering or else the whole system would really fall apart and only dictators would get anything done with human research. That is scary. Like the nazis.
5. What would you change about your profession’s ethics? I think that things are pretty good. I don’t know that I would change much about either.
6. Do you feel comfortable in dealing with a situation in which ethics have been compromised? Not really. As a junior person, when ethics are compromised, playing the whistle blower role is pretty difficult and I hope that I never really have to do that.
7. What are some common ethical issues that arise in your profession? - Not getting ethics board clearance for pilot work
- Conflict of interest
- My expertise does not cover the work that I need to approve
- I should know more of this. Looks like I have to study!
- Falsifying data is pretty serious (making up results to experiments)
8. Are you familiar with all the ethics in your professions code of conduct? - With the research stuff I am more informed than with the engineering stuff. There is a bit of a knowledge gap, clearly.
9. When you are in an ethical dilemma do you make your choices according to your personal ethics or personal ethics?
Of these two choices, I choose personal ethics. I’m guessing that one of those is supposed to be professional? I usually follow personal ethics.
10. Do you feel your ethical code of conduct is similar to other professions ie) dentistry, medical doctors, nurses?
Yes I feel that it is more or less the same. In these professions, as well as mine, it is possible that there are lives at stake, so rightful care needs to be taken to protect people from things that they don’t really know about. We are supposed to do right by the public who is using our services, so it is important to have an ethical code to ensure a standard across professionals.
Christine
Interview with TK, grade 3/4 elementary school teacher.
1. What guidelines, if any, are put in place by your profession to help you if you are experiencing an ethical dilemma?
The Ontario College of teachers created ethical standards and standards of practice for elementary school teachers.
2. To whom would you go to when you experience an ethical dilemma? The first person I would approach is the principal or vice-principal at my school. I also have a teaching partner that I discuss issues with. If I don’t feel that the needs are being addressed, then I can also go to the teacher’s union.
3. Can you think of an ethical dilemma that you experienced, and explain how you dealt with the situation? Briefly, my teaching partner had a student in her class she suspected was being abused. We brought this to the attention of the principal, and she contacted the appropriate people to deal with this. I did have to be interviewed about this case.
4. Why are ethics important to your profession?
Ethics are important because they help guide us in our interactions with students, parents and co-workers. It also shows the public that we are a profession with integrity so that they have confidence in our ability to teach and care for their children.
5. What would you change about your profession’s ethics?
I never really thought about changing anything. I think that it is pretty thorough and straightforward and is easily accessible to the public through the OCT website. It was revised a couple of years ago to make it even more relevant.
6. Do you feel comfortable in dealing with a situation in which ethics have been compromised?
I don’t feel comfortable, but if an issue presents itself it needs to be addressed. It helps to have coworkers to turn to during these times.
7. What are some common ethical issues that arise in your profession? - reporting cases of child abuse - academic dishonesty (“cheating”) - power/control issues between teachers and principals - employment issues (nepotism…those new grads who have family members in the teaching system get jobs regardless of lack of experience). I’m sure there are others I can’t think of right now.
8. Are you familiar with all the ethics in your professions code of conduct?
Not really. It’s been a while since I’ve read them, so I had to look them over again for this interview.
9. When you are in an ethical dilemma do you make your choices according to your personal ethics? Or personal ethics? The first choice I make is based on my personal ethics. If I can’t resolve the dilemma this way, then I turn to my professional ethics.
10. "Does your current setting of employment have similar code of ethics to your regulating profession"
We do have certain codes that we have come up with as a school community. They are more specific to certain situations that we may encounter. Our school is in a poorer area of the city, so we deal with issues of neglect, hunger etc. This code is based on our college’s ethics of care, respect, trust and integrity (I had to look those up in the code)
Rosie
Rosie Saluja interviewing PB - Chartered Accountant Articling Student
- Interview taken on October 22, 2009.
1. What guidelines, if any, are put in place by your profession to help you if you are experiencing an ethical dilemma? The official ethical guidelines are called “Rules of Professional Conduct” (ROPC’s). They are set by the Institute of Chartered Accountants. They outline the grey areas that can occur between clients and Accountants.
2. To whom would you go to when you experience an ethical dilemma? First I can discuss the dilemma with a senior partner in the office. If it doesn’t get resolved inside the office, we can then take the issue to the Institute of Chartered Accountants and have them take action in resolving it.
3. Can you think of an ethical dilemma that you experienced, and explain how you dealt with the situation? I have not personally experienced any ethical dilemmas at work, but I have heard of coworkers experiencing issues with fraud. The ethical dilemma was uncovered through auditing and management interviews. It was dealt with serious heavy discussion with senior managers and partners in the practice lasting 1-2 hours. They had to analyze the situation because there are a lot of grey areas that have to be explained and broken down.
4. Why are ethics important to your profession? Ethics are important for Chartered Accountants because we are held with high regard in our profession. If there is no proper code of conduct, then this profession would lack integrity. Chartered Accountants are reliable and trustworthy because of ethical standards they withhold.
5. What would you change about your profession’s ethics? I don’t think I would change anything about my profession’s ethics.
6. Do you feel comfortable in dealing with a situation in which ethics have been compromised? Yes, I feel comfortable because of the support system we have in place when an unethical situation comes about. It takes a team effort when dealing with an unethical situation . I am confident I would be able to handle an unethical situation on my own as well.
7. What are some common ethical issues that arise in your profession? Fraud, Tax Evasion - When people don;t declare what they should, or declare to many things on their income tax statement.
8. Are you familiar with all the ethics in your professions code of conduct? Yes, I am familiar with all the ethics in my professionals code of conduct.
9. When you are in an ethical dilemma do you make your choices according to your personal ethics? Or professional ethics? I make my choices with a reliance on professional ethics because I believe that personal and professional ethics are the same thing. If someone is stealing, it needs to be reported.
10. How familiar are you with your professions code of ethics? I am very familiar with the ethics in my profession, because in school we worked on quite a few case studies that had unethical issues and were asked what would we do in certain situations.
11. Does your current setting of employment have similar code of ethics to your regulating profession? Yes, our office uses the ‘Rules of Professional Conduct’ from the Institute of Chartered Accountants. We have a copy of the original document in a binder that we refer to when we need to.
Thought I would get the ball rolling and get things started....
Similarities and Differences:
All professions have a set code of ethics set by their regulating college or society.
Importance of ethics are to protect the best interests of the public so that the profession continues to hold a trust worthy, reliable and honest relationship with the public/community. Consequences are set if failure to oblige code of ethics set by a profession and they could result in loss of job.
Most professions look up to peers/colleagues, senior partners, supervisors when faced with an ethical dilemma. 1/5 mentioned they would contact their association or college to assist them with an ethical dilemma.
Code of ethics set in place by the associations of the professionals interviewed were well written and seemed to cover the basics where no one would change anything about them.
20% of interviewees are not comfortable with dealing with ethical situations, while the other 20% feel well versed as they studied their ethics in school. 10% of the interviewed professionals stated that he was not sure because of there are two code of ethics amalgamated into one, and explains that they are quite extensive.
Common ethical issues were conflicts of interests, dishonesty, employment issues and fraud.
Amy