Friday, 14 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session I

The Disclosure of Sensitive Student Information in Social Work Field Placements: When Student Confidentiality and the Code of Ethics Collide

In the course of social work field education difficulties occasionally arise around a particular student's ability to function effectively in the practice setting. For field educators these student difficulties present dilemmas concerning how to protect student confidentiality while concurrently protecting the student's potential clients. These ethical dilemmas sometimes result in hours of conversation and debates within the schools concerning the appropriate resolution. The purpose of this study was to learn how accredited Master of Social Work programs comply with both legal regulations and social work ethics when dealing with sensitive student information during the required field placement.

The research questions included: Are the MSW programs that give legal regulations and student rights priority in the sharing of sensitive student information different in terms of their policies and practices from schools that give priority to ethical concerns for client protection; Are schools with written policies concerning sharing sensitive student information different from schools that do not have written policies? How often does the issue of sharing sensitive student information come up during an academic year?

The survey instrument was constructed of several field placement scenarios in order to gain information about how social work educators make decisions about sharing sensitive student information with the field agencies. The scenarios were constructed by building on the examples of sensitive student information that other survey researchers have used in prior studies. The response categories were structured to provide clear choices and space was provided for comments to be written in for clarification of the categorical responses. An early draft of the survey was sent to six ethical experts for review. The feedback received was used to reconstruct the survey so the questions and intent were clearer

The remainder of the survey requested specific categorical information about the policies and practices around sharing sensitive student information within each school. SPSS was used to manipulate this data.

The paper survey was mailed in November, 2002 to the Field Directors of the 146 accredited MSW programs (as of April, 2002). A total of 80 surveys were returned by February 1, 2003, when the data analysis was begun.

The results emphasize the utility and effectiveness of having policies. With policies, students are more likely to have informed consent to how their sensitive information is shared. If students do not have informed consent, it is more likely that faculty will engage in time-consuming debates. Only 21 of the 80 responding programs (~27%) of the Field Directors reported that their schools had written policies concerning the disclosure of sensitive student information. Only three were placed in the admission materials, so in only three responding programs were the students truly given informed consent. Besides the positive benefits of having a policy, the results begin to suggest that the absence of a policy may be associated with our worst-case scenario. Six or 7.5% of the responding Field Directors reported that their programs had been sued over these issues. Only one of these had a written policy.

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