2 Two Critical Rules

The helping professions are full of ethics codes, agency policies, and state and federal laws that guide our work. However, I have found that two principles can go a long way toward ensuring quality practice: do no harm and seek supervision. Together, these simple rules can help you address many of the challenges you will encounter.

To start, always remember that our work should never harm clients. At the very least, clients who come into our care should leave no worse off than when they started. Just as doctors take an oath to do no harm, we must also ensure that we are protecting our clients at all times. This means both emotionally and physically. Our clients – whether they are children, adolescents, or adults – are our responsibility. The words we use with them and the actions we take with them have consequences. Our presence in their lives influences their development in subtle ways that can have a meaningful impact either for harm or good.

One of the best ways to avoid harm and promote client well-being is to enhance your own skills. This can be done through education, training, supervision, and experience. As your skills improve, so does your client care. Notice that one of the ways we ensure good care is by seeking supervision. Throughout your career, supervision will come in many forms, but regardless of your level of expertise, it is a fundamental part of what allows you to continue functioning at a high level.

You might find that you need to create supervision by creating a team discussion time, setting a regular schedule to meet with a supervisor, and even by doing self-supervision to some extent through an analysis of your own work. You might ask yourself whether the best interventions were chosen, what alternatives could have been offered, and how you would work with a similar client in the future.

Consulting with others is a core element of all good helping practice. It may come from a direct supervisor working with you, but supervision does not have to be done with a person in authority. Colleagues are another great source of feedback when we are stuck on a client or a workplace situation. Consulting books and articles – a kind of self-supervision – can provide meaningful guidance as well. And of course, checking with your code of ethics is always a useful idea.

The point of supervision is to use the tools available to us to ground our decisions and ensure we are practicing within the bounds of our professional duty.  If we work in isolation, we might miss ideas that would be helpful to our clients, or even engage in unethical practice. There is a temptation to think that once we have a few years of experience, we should know the answers and should know how to handle every situation that arises. Resist this trap, just as you would resist the expert trap with your clients.

In order to promote best practice, be mindful of doing no harm and seeking supervision. They are two easy-to-remember rules that will never steer you wrong.