Dr. Vaji

Case Study Seven Worksheet

Respond to the following questions in 1,250 to 1,500 words.

1. Why is this an ethical dilemma? Which APA Ethical Principles help frame the nature of the dilemma?

2. To what extent, if any, should Dr. Vaji consider Leo’s ethnicity in his deliberations? Would the dilemma be addressed differently if Leo self-identified as non-Hispanic White, Hispanic, on non-Hispanic Black?

3. How are APA Ethical Standards 1.08, 3.04, 3.05, 3.09, 7.04, 7.05, and 17.05 relevant to this case? Which other standards might apply?

4. What are Dr. Vaji’s ethical alternatives for resolving this dilemma? Which alternative best reflects the Ethics Code aspirational principle and enforceable standard, as well as legal standards and obligations to stakeholders?
5. What steps should Dr. Vaji take to ethically implement his decision and monitor its effects?

Case 7. Handling Disparate

Information for Evaluating Trainees
Rashid Vaji, Ph.D., a member of the school psychology faculty at a midsize university, serves as a faculty supervisor for students assigned to externships in schools. The department has formalized a supervision and evaluation system for the extern program.
Students have weekly individual meetings with the faculty supervisor and
biweekly meetings with the on-site supervisor. The on-site supervisor writes a midyear (December) and end of academic year (May) evaluation of each student. The site evaluations are sent to Dr. Vaji, and he provides feedback based on the site and his own supervisory evaluation to each student. The final grade (fail, low pass, pass, high pass) is the responsibility of Dr. Vaji.
Dr. Vaji also teaches the Spring Semester graduate class on “Health Disparities in Mental Health.” One of the course requirements is for students to write weekly thought papers, in which they are required to take the perspective of therapy clients from different ethnic groups in reaction to specific session topics. Leo Watson, a second-year graduate student is one of Dr. Vaji’s externship supervisees. He is also enrolled in the Health Disparities course. Leo’s thought papers often present ethnic-minority adolescents as prone to violence and unable to “grasp” the insights
offered by school psychologists. In a classroom role-playing exercise, Leo “plays” an ethnic-minority student client as slumping in the chair not understanding the psychologist and giving angry retorts. In written comments on these thought papers
and class feedback, Dr. Vaji encourages Leo to incorporate more of the readings on racial/ethnic discrimination and multicultural competence into his papers and to provide more complex perspectives on clients.
One day during his office hours, three students from the class come to Dr. Vaji’s office to complain about Leo’s behavior outside the classroom. They describe incidents in which Leo uses derogatory ethnic labels to describe his externship clients and brags about “putting one over” on his site supervisors by describing these clients in “glowing” terms just to satisfy his supervisors’ “stupid liberal do-good” attitudes. They also report an incident at a local bar at which Leo was seen harassing an African American waitress using racial slurs.After the students have left his office, Dr. Vaji reviews his midyear evaluation and supervision notes on Leo and the midyear on-site supervisor’s report. In his own evaluation report Dr. Vaji had written, “Leo often articulates a strong sense of duty to help his ethnic minority students overcome past discrimination but needs additional
growth and supervision in applying a multicultural perspective into his
clinical work.” The on-site supervisor’s evaluation states that Leo has a wonderful attitude towards his student clients . . . Unfortunately
evaluation of his treatment skills is limited because Leo has had less cases to discuss than some of his peers since a larger than usual number of students have stopped coming to their sessions with him.
It is the middle of the Spring Semester, and Dr. Vaji still has approximately 6
weeks of supervision left with Leo. The students’ complaints about Leo, while more extreme, are consistent with what Dr. Vaji has observed in Leo’s class papers and role-playing exercises. However, these complaints are very different from his presentation during on-site supervision. If Leo has been intentionally deceiving both supervisors, then he may be more ineffective or harmful as a therapist to his current clients than either supervisor realized. In addition, purposeful attempts to deceive the supervisors might indicate a personality disorder or lack of integrity that if left
unaddressed might be harmful to adolescent clients in the future.
Ethical Dilemma
Dr. Vaji would like to meet with Leo at minimum to discuss ways to retain adolescent clients and to improve his multicultural treatment skills. He does not know to what extent his conversation with Leo and final supervisory report should be influenced by the information provided by the graduate students.

Solution

Handling Disparate

1. Why is this ethical dilemma? Which APA Ethical Principles help frame the nature of the dilemma?

Rashid Vajii, Ph.D. is a faculty supervisor for students and is in charge of students that are assigned to externships (Fisher, 2013). He is in charge of individual meetings with one supervisor every week and the onsite supervisor every other week.  These meetings result in evaluations twice a year which is sent to Dr. Vajii.  While doing this the doctor also “teaches the Spring Semester graduate class on “Health Disparities in Mental Health” (Fisher, 2013. p.364). Leo, a student, is enrolled in Health Disparities and is also a supervisee of Dr. Vajii.  Leo comes off as interested in what he is doing and seems to be an upstanding student.  While observing Leo, the Doctor notices that Leo tends to use the role play in class as a way to show what his version of an ethnic minority student should be perceived as.  He does this by making angry remarks and playing dumb.  The Doctor has spoke to Leo about this and asked him to explore ways to take what he has read on discrimination dealing with different cultures and races and show the clients better perspectives (Fisher, 2013).

            During this time students have come to the doctor and discussed the behavior of Leo’s outside of the class, including racial slurs to a woman at a bar off of school grounds.  They have also told the Doctor how Leo brags of pulling the wool over the eyes of his instructors because he feels they are inferior.  Thus the Doctor is in a dilemma because Leo acts one way in front of him and another way when he is out on his own.  He doesn’t know if Leo has a mental disorder that has not been diagnosed or a lack of integrity.  If it is a lack of integrity then Leo could be causing more harm than good when he is able to have his own clients.  To assess him is somewhat difficult because even the kids that were coming to see Leo have slacked off considerably.  The question again would be why?  Leo’s fellow students have told the doctor things that he can’t prove, just listening to hearsay so it could be that they are discriminating against Leo.  There is also the dual relationship between Dr. Vajii and Leo.  This being said, it is not right for the Doctor to rate an evaluation for Leo as his opinion could be biased.  There is more than one dilemma, including the discrimination and the unethical way Leo speaks of his supervisors.

2. To what extent, if any, should Dr. Vajii consider Leo’s ethnicity in his deliberations? Would the dilemma be addressed differently if Leo self-identified as non-Hispanic White, Hispanic, on non-Hispanic Black?

         There are many times when one’s ethnicity should come into play when dealing with situations.  This is one situation due to the fact that Leo is showing inappropriate behavior towards people who have a different ethnicity than he does.  At the class time he was role-playing and displayed a person targeted as a minority and showed them speaking angrily and slumping in their char and also insulting a waitress because she was African-American.  If Leo was a different ethnicity some things could be done differently, especially if he, (Leo), were Hispanic or black.  His behaviors must be addressed by the doctor though so Leo doesn’t think that what he did was correct.  There are groups of minorities treated differently than other minorities just because they are from other countries and if Leo were one of these; his behavior could be labeled differently than just hostile.  This is because the minorities of other countries in the USA are discriminated against and the minority groups of the USA are discriminated against, just not so much.

3. How are APA Ethical Standards 1.08, 3.04, 3.05, 3.09, 7.04, 7.05, and 17.05 relevant to this case? Which other standards might apply?

         Ethical standard 1.08 is Unfair Discrimination Against Complainants and Respondents.  This standard is relevant because the Doctor should not discriminate against Leo solely on what his classmates have disclosed when speaking of the manner Leo acted toward the waitress at the bar.  Standard 3. 04 is Avoiding Harm.  This standard is in effect because the doctor will go back to this when addressing things about Leo.  By going over these, the doctor and the psychologist can avoid harm in the future when detailing things with Leo.  Standard 3.05 is Multiple Relationships.  3.05 is relevant because Dr. Vajii interacts in two different ways with Leo.  One is as his intern and the other is in the group.  Standard 3.09, Cooperation with other Professionals is relevant here because Dr. Vajii does not act alone.  He talks with the school psychiatrist and other professionals inside the school when dealing with any issues with students.  The standard 7.04, Student Disclosure of Personal Information is in effect because of the different professionals that know the students and they all know the same information of the students.  Standard 7.05, Mandatory Individual or Group Therapy, is relevant because Leo is in the group and is also an intern where people come to see him.  They are missing sessions though assumedly because of Leo’s behavior. 

4. What are Dr. Vaji’s ethical alternatives for resolving this dilemma? Which alternative best reflects the Ethics Code aspirational principle and enforceable standard, as well as legal standards and obligations to stakeholders?

        One alternative would be to have the school counselor request to speak with Leo about his behavior and see if there is something underlying that is affecting his behavior.  By doing this Leo’s information will be disclosed so that the counselor can get to the bottom of Leo’s behavior.  This needs to be looked into before someone can get Leo’s consent to have his information disclosed to the school counselor.  Dr. Vajii needs to speak with Leo so that he can get to the real reasons why Leo is acting discordingly towards others.  He knows Leo better than the others and may be able to see better why this behavior is happening.  The behavior could be done by Leo on purpose, as the doctor thinks.  Leo is usually a strong leader with a good repotorire with the students.  By talking to Leo on a personal level the Doctor might be able to better direct Leo towards more proper behavior. 

5. What steps should Dr. Vaji take to ethically implement his decision and monitor its effects?

         To get to the reason why Leo is acting  with this form of behavior, Dr. Vajii would have to do a sit down conversation with Leo and ask some open ended questions so that he could come up with a direction that Leo could take to change his attitude and his behavior.  By letting Leo know that he can intermingle his readings on ethical discriminations and racism, it helps the base of his multicultural competence and will be noted when he writes his papers.  It will also help Leo to better talk with his own clients and provide them with direction as to not show this form of behavior or derogatory actions.  When it comes to his classmates, Leo should not show racism towards them and he should involve himself with them more and offer an apology.  Leo should not put himself in places where he might be tempted to make racial slurs.  It will help to find out why he feels this way and what can be done to change how he feels.  After speaking with Leo the doctor should set up weekly visits to keep track of how Leo is doing in his efforts to curb this behavior.  The doctor might be able to observe Leo in his action while he is with his classmates to see if the talks with him have helped and if not, find another strategy with a bigger success rate.  By doing all of this it should help Leo while he is still doing his internship and during his classroom time.

References

Fisher, C. B. (2013). Decoding the ethics code: A practical guide for psychologists. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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