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Legal & Ethical Issues AND
Maintaining Professional Boundaries

BUNDLED PACKAGE -
Discounted Individual Rate: $179 
Live Webinar, 6 CEs
(Must attend both segments for CE. No partial credit or refunds.)
Approvals: NYSED, OASAS, APA
 

PART 1: Legal and Ethical Issues 
for Psychotherapists

Date: Friday, February 7,  2025

Time: 10AM-1:00PM

Credits: 3 CEs (NYS LMSWs, LCSWs, LMHCs, LMFTs, Psychologists)

Location: Live Webinar

Instructor: Bruce Hillowe, JD, PhD, Attorney and Counselor at Law

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Approvals: NYSED, OASAS, APA

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Description:

This workshop will review the essential ethical and legal background for the provision of psychotherapy by LMSWs, LCSWs, LMHCs, LMFTs and PhDs in New York State. Practitioners will be provided with templates for record-keeping, informed consent, HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices, authorizations for the release of patient information, and forms for the denial of access to patient information.

This program meets the NYS Ethics requirement for Psychologists in NYS.

 

Focus on:

•1. Beginning and planning treatment 

(Including treatment plans and progress notes)

•2. Informed consent

•3. Special issues in treating children, and child abuse reporting

•4. Assessing and managing at-risk patients

•5. Access to treatment records by patients

•6. Confidentiality, privilege and disclosures to third parties

•7. Terminating treatment and avoiding abandonment

•8. Malpractice and professional discipline​​​

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Learning Objectives:

  • Learn current and basic ethical and legal backgrounds for psychotherapy practice
     

  • Plan and prepare to implement record-keeping and documentation requirements for psychotherapy practice
     

  • Analyze the process of the evaluation, reporting, and recording of at-risk patients and circumstances
     

  • Apply risk management principles without compromising clinical integrity
     

  • Utilize tools to make clinical decisions in accordance with ethical, legal, and risk management guidelines

AND

PART 2: Maintaining Professional Boundaries in Psychotherapy

(This course has been designed to meet NYS's mandatory Boundaries CE requirement.)

 

Date: Friday, February 7, 2025

Time: 2:00 - 5:00 PM

Location: Live Webinar

Credits: 3 CEUs (NYSED LMSWs, LCSWs, LMHCs, LMFTs, Psychologists)

Instructor: Bruce Hillowe, JD, PhD, Attorney and Counselor at Law

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The New York State Board of Regents recently mandated that effective April 1, 2023, psychologists, social workers and mental health practitioners (LMHC’s, LMFT’s, LPsa’s and LCAT’s) take as part of their required continuing education a three credit course on the maintenance of professional boundaries with patients. The reason for the new requirement is concern about the number of professional disciplinary proceedings by the State’s licensing boards against mental health professionals where boundaries have allegedly been violated. This course has been designed to meet the State’s mandatory CE requirement for both boundaries and ethics: courses on boundaries that cover New York laws, rules and regulations related to unprofessional conduct may also be counted toward the ethics requirement.

 

Topics to be discussed will include the ethical, professional, legal and clinical backgrounds for boundaries; discriminating between boundary crossings and violations; the establishment and maintenance of boundaries at the outset of and during psychotherapy including issues of multiple relationships, at- risk patients and social media; the challenge of vulnerable patients and therapists; and maintaining clinical creativity and flexibility within the therapeutic frame. The potential harm and legal consequences of boundary violations will also be reviewed. The presenter is Bruce V. Hillowe JD PhD, a psychologist-psychoanalyst and mental health care attorney who has defended hundreds of mental health practitioners in professional disciplinary proceedings in New York State, many of them for alleged boundary violations.

 

Learning Objectives:

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Determine how legal, ethical and clinical standards necessitate the setting of boundaries in psychotherapy.

Define multiple relationships.

Assess the difference between boundary violations and boundary crossings.

Outline the factors in how to make ethically and clinically sound decisions regarding boundaries during psychotherapy.

Identify the circumstances that arise during therapy where boundary issues are implicated.

Identify vulnerability of therapists and patients that might lead to boundary violations and crossings.

List the possible consequences of boundary violations and crossings.

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Speaker: Bruce Hillowe, JD, PhD

Bruce V. Hillowe, J.D, Ph.D. is a mental healthcare attorney with a law practice in Mineola, New York. A graduate of Binghamton University, Duke University School of Law, and Adelphi University Derner Institute (Clinical Psychology and Postdoctoral Programs), he formerly practiced as a psychologist-psychoanalyst, including as a coordinator of clinical training and a director of a forensic mental health service. He was a teaching attending psychologist in law and ethics at a major teaching hospital for 15 years. He currently teaches courses in ethics and law as adjunct faculty at the Derner Institute. He is legal counsel to numerous mental health facilities, institutes, and practitioners, and sponsors legal plans for professional associations. He has written articles and book chapters including for law reviews and healthcare publications, most recently regarding scope of practice and disciplinary defense. He is listed in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers in healthcare law and is a "SuperLawyer" featured in the New York Times Magazine.

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