The Ohio Board of Psychology is periodically informed about confusion or misunderstandings regarding rules. One misunderstanding is the belief that if a psychologist, as a client, discloses an apparent serious violation of the Board’s law or rules within a professional psychological relationship, the treating psychologist must violate confidentiality and report the violation to the Board. The frequently referenced but periodically misunderstood rule is OAC 4732-17-01:

(K) Aiding illegal practice:

(4) Reporting of violations to board. A license holder who has substantial reason to believe that another license holder or psychological or school psychological supervisee has committed an apparent violation of the statutes or rules of the board that has substantially harmed or is likely to substantially harm a person or organization shall so inform the board in writing; however, when the information regarding such violation is obtained in a professional relationship with a client, the license holder shall report it only with the written permission of the client. Under such circumstances the license holder shall advise the client of the name, address, and telephone number of the state board of psychology and of the client’s right to file a complaint. The license holder shall make reasonable efforts to guide and/or facilitate the client in the complaint process as needed or requested by the client. Nothing in this rule shall relieve a license holder from the duty to file any report required by applicable statutes. This rule requires license holders to report apparent misconduct to the Board, and a release is always required if the information is obtained in a professional relationship. Otherwise, reporting to the Board would be a violation of the client’s right to hold and assert the privilege. There should be no confusion that this does not change when the client is another psychologist. Notwithstanding mandatory reporting laws (e.g., duty to warn, protecting children from abuse and neglect) psychologists shall not violate the confidentiality of their clients. It is therefore a misconception when psychologists believe that they do not have the exact same right to confidentiality and privacy as any other person. The importance is magnified when services are sought from another psychologist and presenting problems relate to professional practice issues or possible impairment. Drug and alcohol abuse, impaired judgment, and boundary violations should be—and are—safe topics about which psychologists should seek consultation and interventions without worrying about the Board being notified.

It is possible that the misconception is rooted in a misunderstanding about the context in which apparent violations are learned. The first sentence of the rule seems absolute (“shall so inform the board in writing”) although it is qualified with the second part of the sentence, “however, when the information regarding such violation is obtained in a professional relationship with a client, the license holder shall report it only with the written permission of the client.”

Help-seeking can be difficult enough under optimal conditions, and nothing should ever prevent a psychologist from receiving confidential psychological services or other healthcare services under the same conditions afforded to anyone else. To the degree that there is any chilling effect in the community of psychologists rooted in misunderstandings, our hope is that this clarification will be reassuring to psychologists as both service providers and as prospective service recipients.

*Ohio Board of Psychology, November 8, 2018

Sandra (Sandy) L. Shullman, PhD, a Columbus, Ohio consulting psychologist internationally known in leadership assessment and development, has been elected 2020 president of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Shullman is a partner in the Columbus, Ohio, office of the Executive Development Group, and manages large, long-term global organizational client engagements, focusing on executive education and coaching, strategic leadership development and organizational diversity initiatives. She has served two terms on the APA Board of Directors and seven years on the board of the American Psychological Foundation. She chaired the APA Good Governance Project, designed to align the organization with strategy and values, promoting transparency, engagement, inclusion and nimbleness at APA. She is a past president of the Ohio Psychological Association. Her distinguished record of organizational leadership spans higher education, research, health care and consulting. Dr. Shullman holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Dickinson College, a master’s in education from Harvard University and a PhD in counseling psychology from The Ohio State University.

*Editor’s Note(s):  Excerpted from an American Psychological Association news release

Keeping current with professional literature can be a daunting task.  Even if you have personal subscriptions to major journals, it is difficult to keep up to date with the many recent publications in your areas of interest.  Many journals provide options to receive tables of contents as new journal issues are published which can be requested from a library. Free online specialized search engines are available to search for recent and past journal articles. If you are fortunate to have university library privileges, this may mean having full text online access to journal articles.  Some articles are published as open access and may be available online for free or from the author (s).  Below is a list of several major professional literature search engines that may be useful in searching for professional articles.

Pub Med  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

“PubMed comprises more than 28 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.” This search engine is available as a mobile app at:

The Apple Store https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pubmed-on-tap/id301316540

Google Play Store  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.nih.nlm.lhc.pubmed4hh

Google Scholar   https://scholar.google.com/

“Google Scholar describes its scope and content generally, and, unlike the major science and technology bibliographic databases such as PubMed, ISI Web of Science, or Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, the search engine does not provide any source lists of publications searched or authority files for author names, journal titles, or controlled vocabulary for subjects. These considerations greatly limit Google Scholar’s use as an exclusive research tool for STM research. The search engine, however, returns a large number of search results very quickly.”

Semantic Scholar   https://www.semanticscholar.org/

Semantic Scholar “… is designed to be a “smart” search service for journal articles. The project uses a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, machine vision to add a layer of semantic analysis to the traditional methods of citation analysis. In comparison to Google Scholar and PubMed, it is designed to quickly highlight the most important papers and identify the connections between them.”

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