Introduction
In Ohio, we have an ethics requirement. Every two years we need to have one CEU that is related to ethics and cultural competency. With any licensure board you are allowed to write them a letter, so I wrote them a letter about five years ago when I started to do some of these ethics talks and said, "Why do we need ethics?" I received two individual emails from members of the licensure board basically saying, "What are you up to?" I said, "No, literally, I just want to know why you thought it was important that we need to have ethics training." They sent me a response letter (see Figure 1), I am going to read you the salient points. "The ethics requirement was enacted for occupational therapy practitioners to refresh their knowledge on the ethical laws governing the practice of occupational therapy, and to enhance the licensee's ability to maintain an ethical conscience to preserve the integrity of the profession. In addition the ethics requirements strengthen the occupational therapy community by maintaining consumer confidence in the occupational therapy services being provided."
Figure 1. Letter from state board. View enlarged version (PDF)
I think that is true and I think it is really important for us to make sure that in all situations we are being ethical, but especially when we are dealing with our students. It is really important that we show them how occupation therapy needs to be practiced. I think it is important across the board in terms of everything we do but especially in relationship to our students.
Ethical, Legal, and Moral Reasoning
Ethical, legal, and moral reasoning are not the same thing (see Figure 2). Sometimes things can be moral but illegal. An example would be decisions made in the 60's where people followed their moral beliefs, but were in some ways breaking the law, like civil rights or voting rights. Something also could be legal but unethical. For example, in terms of marijuana legalization in some places it might be legal to smoke marijuana, but you can still be fired from your employer. Those are all things that we need to make sure we keep in the forefront of our mind.
Figure 2. Differentiating between ethical, legal, and moral reasoning.
There is a famous quote from Socrates (see Figure 3), "I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make him think." It is important for us to be thoughtful about what we do and how we act. It really does have serious consequences for us and certainly for the students we supervise. As we think about differentiating our ethical, legal and moral reasoning, ethics is basically a branch of philosophy. It helps to frame arguments.
