This text-based course is a written transcript of the course, “Legal and Ethical Implications of Professional Practice: When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, presented by Glenn Waguespack, M.S., CCC-Aand Theresa Rodgers, M.A., CCC-SLP on July 18, 2011.
Communication access realtime translation (cart) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be totally verbatim. The consumer should check with the moderator for any clarifications.
>> Amy Natho: I would like to welcome you to the SpeechPathology.com e-learning Expert Seminar entitled, “Legal and Ethical Implications of Professional Practice: When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” My name is Amy Natho and I'll be your moderator for this online course today. At this time it is very much my honor to introduce Theresa Rodgers and Glenn Waguespack. Theresa Rodgers is a speech-language pathologist and Supervisor of Special Education. She is currently Secretary of the National Council of State Boards of Examiners for Speech Language Pathology and Audiology and a member of the Louisiana Licensure Board. She is an ASHA fellow and member of ASHA's Continuing Education Board, as well as the Speech-Language Pathology Advisory Council. Theresa is a former Chair of ASHA's Council for Clinical Certification. She's a former LSHA President and former President of the Council of State Association Presidents. She has presented numerous workshops and short courses on the national and state levels in the areas of ethics.
Glenn Waguespack is a private practice audiologist and also on the clinical faculty of the LSU Medical School. He has served six terms on the Louisiana Licensure Board, including 6 years as Chair, and he is a former State Association President. He is a Board Member, the current editor and a former President of the National Council of State Boards of Examiners for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. He is an ASHA fellow, former chair of ASHA's Council on Academic Accreditation, and former Chair of ASHA's Continuing Education Board. He has presented numerous workshops and short courses in the area of ethics on national and state levels. Those are pretty impressive biographies! We're very pleased to have you here today, Glenn and Theresa.
>> Glenn Waguespack: Welcome to our presentation on “Legal and Ethical Implications of Professional Practice”. We're glad that you're able to join us to talk about some of the issues. Let me preface my remarks by saying one of the things that we're going to point out throughout this presentation is how perception has a lot to do with what you think is ethical and what you think is unethical. There are things that are essentially written in stone, in that they're laws and they're legal issues. But there are also all kinds of ethical implications that we're going to deal with in terms of professional practice. One of the things that we hope to show you is that many of your perceptions related to how you practice are really based on your moral values, your ethical values that have been with you for many years.
This graphic of a woman in tears represents some of the way that we feel sometimes in dealing with ethical issues. As Amy said, Theresa is a current member of the Licensure Board and I'm a former member of the Licensure Board in Louisiana. We often had to deal with ethical issues, and many times, the tears you see there are actually coming from Board Members as well most of the licensees sitting before the Board.
We thought we would start this with a warm up to illustrate how difficult it is to make determinations regarding ethics and regarding what constitutes unethical behavior. For example:
Audiologist No. 1 evaluates a patient for hearing aids and informs the patient that he is recommending the aids from XYZ Manufacturer because he is only four aids away from qualifying for a free cruise. At the same time, Audiologist No. 2 sees a different patient and bases his recommendation for aids on the quantity discount he receives from the ABC Manufacturer; however, he does not pass the information or the discount on to the patient.
