The Ethical Standards Of Competence

Overall, the ethical standards concerning competence is vital to ensure a clinically competent supervisor provides sufficient knowledge and training experiences to help supervisee to achieve competencies within a supportive context, while monitoring the treatment received by the client (Thomas, 2014, Wise & Cellucci, 2014). When Watkins (2011) examined the contribution of psychotherapy supervision to the patient outcomes through 18 supervision outcome studies ranging from 1981 to 2011. These 30 years of supervision outcome research was unable to provide further information about the contribution of psychotherapy supervision on patient outcome due to misidentified studies and various methodological deficits across investigations. However, Watkins (2011) indicated that the study conducted by Bambling, King, Raue, Schweitzer, & Lambert (2006) was the foremost research to directly investigate the effects of supervision and patient outcome in 127 depressed patients with major depression. They reported psychotherapy supervision was favorably affecting client outcome. The patients in supervised, as opposed to unsupervised treatment, reported the higher level of satisfaction with treatment, better working alliance, higher symptoms reduction, and more apt to stay in treatment. In addition, a recent study showed that the most recent graduates associated with better client’s outcomes due to the recent increased emphasis on supervision (Wrape, Callahan, Ruggero, & Watkins, 2015). These studies demonstrate the importance of the ability to adhere to the ethical standards to provide the high quality of care to the clients.

According to the Ethical Standards, clinical supervisors are responsible to ensure the competence of their work and to prot...

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... standards are not sufficient to address complex issues. For instance, the APA does not provide specific instruction or substantial direction regarding how much training, supervised experience, consultation, or study is sufficient for clinical psychologists who have no supervising experience to supervise others in the file. In addition, what is the basis of judging whether a clinical psychologist is competent in providing training and at the same time ensuring the client is receiving the high quality of care? These are the questions appear in my mind when reading the ethical standards. However, that being said, even though these standards are not perfect, it serves as a guideline for psychologists in this helping field. At the very minimum, it serves as a funnel to prevent those unethical people to be in this profession in order to protect the vulnerable population.