Module Directory

In this module you will be reading a range of texts concerned with policy, ethics and professional conduct in the workplace. It is important to give equal weight to ethical matters alongside clinical and theoretical matters, and to familiarise yourselves with the wider responsibilities you have towards your organisation, your discipline, and particularly towards your clients and yourselves as professions.

You will be exploring a range of policy, ethical and conduct issues emerging from the readings in order to begin preparing for a professional career in health education and social care. These issues will be placed within a professional context using examples made available to you in your readings, on the Moodle and from your own experience.

In addition, you will also be considering how a psychodynamic perspective sheds light on the emotional processes involved in dealing with human beings who may be in care, in crisis and under duress. You will be asking questions about why the processes and procedures that organisations and agencies set up in order to safeguard and protect individuals sometimes appear to fail. Are the policies and regulatory guidance and procedures we use guaranteed to ensure clients and staff are kept safe, and organisations are effectively run? What are the processed involved when regulated areas of our work falter or spiral beyond control and what can the individual professional do to support more effective practice in these circumstances?

The aims of this module are:

• To inform students about the frameworks around therapeutic work and to facilitate responsible practice


• To focus students' attention on areas of professional conduct and ethical considerations and debates, with a psychodynamic understanding of the issues and dynamics involved

By the end of the module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Be informed about the statutory and ethical frameworks within which therapeutic work takes place


2. Have learned to give equal weight to ethical matters alongside clinical and theoretical matters


3. Have been familiarised with their wider responsibilities towards their organisation, their discipline, their clients and themselves


4. Develop further understanding of and the application of codes of professional conduct; ethical responsibilities and socio-political norms and mores


5. Have learned to apply psychodynamic understanding to the wider context of their work

This module will be delivered via:

• Nine seminars of 2 hours each
• The first hour of seminars will introduce the topics with discussion groups to follow in the second hour
• Structured debates and workshops will take place where appropriate
• Independent Learning
• During this module successful students are expected to complete at least 15hrs of non-seminar additional study for this module. This amounts to at least 3hrs additional study per week
• The set readings which you must read to prepare for seminars are laid out in the weekly structure but we recommend a number of full texts that you should consult more fully.