P ROFESSIONAL L IABILITY
P ROFESSIONAL L IABILITY
How do clinicians protect themselves online? Major professional organiza- tions, such as the American Psychology Association’s Insurance Trust (APAIT), do not specifi cally include or exclude online therapy and have no plans to do so in the future. Stuart Benas, APAIT Supervisor of Field Underwriting, explains that the goal of a good insurance policy is to “cover the practice of psychology and if your practice is online, it should be covered.” Benas adds that whether you are insured for online professional services or not is different from whether you may get sued (S. Benas, personal communication, Oct. 17, 2005).
How do clinicians make sure they use the Internet wisely without clear professional standards and when the digital method of delivery changes often? It’s already hard to keep up with basic hardware and software upgrades. Old technolo- gies expire and some new technologies age out of the market in a few years. Don Tapscott (2005) writes in the Wall Street Journal that the next 5 years will bring more “bundled” Internet services that orchestrate and link hundreds of devices we use every day through high-quality digital technology. As we become more dependent on these bundled services, both the clinician and consumer will become more tech- nologically expert. Thus, it will not be incumbent upon the clinician alone to insure that a patient understands online communication technology.
A recent article in the California Psychological Association’s (CPA) Briefi ngs newsletter illustrated the liability of being unable to protect patients’ and psychologists’ privacy in a digital world. From a risk management perspective, this is a clinician’s nightmare because cyberspace cannot be controlled. The CPA article discusses ways to protect personal information by using the “latest” web tool, Zaba Search, which supposedly can be used to protect your online informa- tion. However, by the time the article went to press, Zaba Search was no longer operative. In the online world, just when you think you understand how to use the system more wisely, new services, websites, and information disappear (Privacy? What privacy? 2005).
10 Cyber Shrinks: Expanding the Paradigm
Societal concerns about privacy and freedom of expression continue to
be played out in cyberspace as the government struggles with protection of the public versus individual rights online. In 2004, the Supreme Court overturned the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, ruling that Congress could not devise a plan to protect children from explicit sex sites that would not “trample the First Amendment” (“A law too far,” 2004. p. B8). Identity theft could become a legal quandary for clinicians who maintain a presence online. Whittaker (2004) calls the phenomenon of stealing a web domain or online identity “cybersquatting” (p. 2). When websites expire, nothing prevents others from usurping the domain name and redirecting the innocent Web surfer to another site entirely. There are steps one can take to protect online communications. Encryption software and fi rewalls are recommended but are often diffi cult to install and expensive. Although the cyberspace issues in professional practice may seem more like science fi ction than science, Skinner and Zack (2004) propose that all of these online risk management issues are no more insurmountable than those in the traditional offi ce.