Get Taught

In this iteration, I am to offer some reflections on a learning activity. I have chosen to use a case study assignment that we did in our Relationships and Interpersonal Skills class. This case study was meant to get our groups to stop and think about some ethical dilemmas that we may very well encounter during our time as Massage Therapists.

This assignment allowed the individual groups to discuss the topics as they arose, and it seems that as a class, most things were “cut and dry”. My group had to discuss the conduct we should take in the event that a client we referred to another practitioner was being sexually abused by that very same individual. The ethical dilemma comes from a few angles. First and foremost, sexual abuse is wrong, and illegal. Secondly, the healthcare practitioner who is abusing their power would have been a part of the clients circle of care, who is only involved because of our referral. lastly, the care they should have gotten is needed, and now the client must also deal with not meeting their recovery goals.

My group came up with a very simple response to this problem. The practitioner must be held accountable, the client must be taken care of and they should referred to someone who is deserving of trust. The CMTO has some specific standards that allowed us to back the response with rules and we didn’t encounter any blow back from the class regarding our decision.

I am not interested in group work. It is something that I am heavily against in an educational setting, however, in this scenario it did afford us the opportunity to discuss the problem with peers, something that may have been difficult in reality, especially given the SOP’s regarding privacy. I can’t say I’d love to do it again, but in the context of ethics, discussion is the best way to determine the correct course of action. That’s a little hard to do on your own.

That’s that, and another post done.