Ethical Decision Making in Clinical Neuropsychology »

Shane S. Bush, PhD, ABPP, ABPN maintains a private practice on Long Island, New York. He is Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science, Stony Brook University School of Medicine and Associate Professor at the Touro College School of Health Sciences. Dr. Bush has published extensively on ethics and presented on ethical issues at national and international conferences.

This is an up-to-date guide to ethical decision making in the daily practice of clinical neuropsychology that includes a Continuing Education (CE) component administered by the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology. Emphasizing positive ethics, the book models a decision-making process by which practitioners can successfully resolve common ethical challenges. It is organized around the Ethical Standards of the American Psychological Association, each of which is systematically applied to neuropsychology and brought to life through extensive case studies that show the ethical decision-making model in action. (The book contains a total of 27 cases.) The book reflects the most recent published ethical, professional, and legal requirements and guidelines and synthesizes the latest research. Graduate students, those preparing for board certification, and even experienced clinical neuropsychologists will find much here that is useful; it will be especially valuable neuropsychologists who do forensic work. Those who wish to earn CE credit after reading the book are directed to a test on the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology website.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Christopher J. Graver, PhD(Madigan Army Medical Center)
Description:Ethical practice in any clinical field is of critical importance. The field of neuropsychology continues to develop and evolve, necessitating ongoing discussion of ethical issues.
Purpose:Taken from discussions at the 2007 annual meeting of the National Academy of Neuropsychology, this book is intended to summarize major points from those discussions in an effort to provide a resource on key ethical debates in the field.
Audience:This is intended mainly for neuropsychologists, but clinical psychologists will likely find it of value, as many of the issues are applicable to general clinical practice. The author is well published on the topic of ethics in neuropsychology.
Features:The book is written at an accessible level for both clinicians and students of psychology. In addition to the information summarized in the book, readers are referred to numerous documents detailing ethical guidelines. The major ethical challenges are identified early and subsequent chapters address these issues through case examples and appropriate references. Suggestions are made about methods for resolving ethical dilemmas and are linked to the case examples. Each chapter ends with study questions that provide a useful review. The references are pertinent and up to date, but there is no index for quick referencing.
Assessment:This is a concise yet immediately helpful guide to ethics in neuropsychology. The examples are representative of common ethical dilemmas and the book helps to summarize pertinent sections from numerous documents on ethics that could otherwise take hours to compile. An index would have made it much easier to use as a quick reference, but this should not deter readers from purchasing such a practical and worthwhile resource.