Our aim is to help people resolve their problems and live fulfilling lives. To help ensure that we make a positive difference we follow a number of ethical principles.
The ethical guidelines to which we subscribe are:
- The Malaysian Society of Clinical Psychology Code of Ethics
- The British Psychological Society’s ‘Code of Ethics & Conduct’ &
- The Health & Care Professions Council (UK) ‘Standards of Conduct Performance and Ethics‘
We also refer to the British Psychological Society’s Practice Guidelines which provide a more indepth consideration of common issues in the ethical practice of clinical psychology. Some of the suggestions require adaptation because of the difference between the Malaysia and the UK.
If you review these guidelines you’ll notice that there is a lot of overlap between the ethics guidelines. They don’t contradict each other but they do complement each other.
Our Executive Coach, Zaryl Tan, is not a clinical psychologist but she fully subscribes to the ethical principles listed below. Where we have written ‘Clinical Psychologist’ or ‘psychologist’ you can swap in ‘Executive Coach‘.
You are welcome to read the ethics documents listed below – we have provided PDF versions of them at the bottom of this page. However, the documents are a little long so we have summarised the points which we think are most relevant below:
Confidentiality
Everything that you say to your psychologist is entirely confidential. We will never reveal what we have discussed to anyone else. The only exception to this is if we need to discuss an issue anonymously in supervision (see note below) or if we have concerns for your safety or concerns for someone else’s safety. We would then try to make contact with someone who would be able to keep you or the other person safe. Even in this situation we would make every effort to tell you what we are going to do, explain why and discuss the best way of keeping you safe while preserving your privacy.
In the unlikely event that you happen to meet your psychologist in a social situation they will not tell anyone how they know you. If you cross paths with your psychologist they may pretend not to know you. We do this to preserve your privacy. However, if you would like to say hello to us or tell others that we’ve been working together then we would be very happy for you to do so.
Note Keeping
Our administrators will take your contact details and make these available to the psychologist with whom you will be meeting. Your details remain entirely confidential within Share Resolve. We will never share your name or contact details with anyone outside of Share Resolve unless you give us permission to do so.
Your psychologist will make some notes to aid their memory after you have met with them. These notes are stored physically or electronically in a secure system. We avoid associating your full name with our notes. If you would like to see what we have written you can let us know and we can talk through them together.
Kindness
At Share Resolve it’s also vital to us that all our Clinical Psychologists are genuinely kind and that they extend the same high level of kindness to anyone regardless of their race, ethnicity, nationality, class, wealth, religion, belief, gender, language, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, health or other status.
We interview and interact with our Clinical Psychologists extensively and we are confident that they genuinely wish to help others. If you are ever unhappy with something they have said or done please let your clinical psychologist know. They will try their best to change their actions. If you feel uncomfortable telling your clinical psychologist that something they are doing is unhelpful, or you have tried telling them but nothing has changed please email us at complaints@resolve.my.
Informed consent
Decisions such as whether to continue meeting with one of our psychologists, ending the session early, what we do in the session, what you do outside of the session and which of our questions you should answer are always yours. Your psychologist will describe the different approaches and strategies they think will be helpful to you. You can discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each option so that you have as much information as possible with which to make a decision. If you are not sure why your psychologist is asking certain questions or making a particular suggestion then we encourage you to ask us so we can better explain ourselves.
Supervision
Clinical Psychologists recognise the importance of having a second opinion or someone who will take a different perspective. For this reason it is common for Clinical Psychologists to have regular ‘supervision’ with another Clinical Psychologist.
The psychologists at Share Resolve speak with each other to help improve their practice. Dr. Dan meets with the psychologists and executive coaches regularly. Dr. Dan also speaks regularly with experienced psychologists in the UK to keep his knowledge up to date. We sometimes talk about particular clients and how we are trying to help them. But if we do that then we don’t give any identifying information about the individual so as to avoid breaking confidentiality.
Conflicts of Interest
If you already know your psychologist in another capacity (e.g as friends or colleagues) it may not be possible for them to offer therapy to you as this would lead to a conflict of interest. In such a situation we try to recommend another psychologist who would be better placed to help.
Psychologists should be entirely focussed on improving your well-being. For this reason once you start working with a psychologist they will not start any other form of relationship with you. We often very much like the people we are working with but we will not attempt to meet with you socially and certainly not romantically. Psychologists work this way because it could cause harm if we went into our sessions hoping to make friends or to get something out of the people we meet.
Maintaining skills & knowledge
We keep ourselves up-to-date with the latest developments in Clinical Psychology so that we can work using the most effective methods. We are independently audited by our respective registering or licensing bodies. For example, Dr Dan is audited by the British Psychological Society and the Health & Care Professions Council to ensure that he learns continuously in order to maintain his high level of specialist knowledge.
Complaints
If you feel that any of our psychologists have acted unethically, if you are concerned about confidentiality or if you feel that we need to make changes to our practice please email us at complaints@resolve.my.
Ethics Guidelines
The ethics documents mentioned in the article above are provided below as Adobe PDF documents:
You can read the documents here or download them to your own computer.