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BROAD RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CONFERENCE PLANNERS
● Prepare a statement about confidentiality in calls for papers.
This statement should alert presenters to the documented negative consequences of lapses in confidentiality for both patients and analysts and spell out expectations surrounding presentation of clinical material. Presenters should be advised to consult their peers early on about their wish to share clinical material in a meeting. Circulating material in written or digital form should be avoided.
● Review submitted papers carefully.
The scientific committee should vet particularly carefully each submission containing clinical material. It may be prudent to delegate a specific member with the responsibility for vetting confidentiality risks in clinical presentations. Since this committee may not know the author and his or her milieu, consultation at the local level may be an alternative form of protection. Once accepted, a direct conversation between the planning team and the author should ensure that the clinical material has been thoughtfully presented. Planners might opt to include a form that asks presenters to disclose how they have addressed concerns with patient confidentiality. Appendix A provides the vetting process used for clinical publications by the International Journal of Psychoanalysis that might be adopted for use by conference planners .
● Include a statement on confidentiality in the printed programme if there is one.
● Have chairs read a statement aloud before every panel or workshop.
Chairs of events in which clinical material will be shared could be asked to read aloud a statement. We recommend that these statements be re-worded regularly, so that they continue to command the audience’s attention. This statement should remind attendees of the risks of inadvertent disclosures that can occur in group discussion after formal presentations.
● Raise the risks on informed consent with presenters
Although informed consent is always complicated by transferential implications, in some jurisdictions, the presentation of clinical material may be legally safe only with the written consent of the patient. Legal safety might not, however, fully discharge our ethical responsibility towards the patient and the treatment. When informed consent is proposed as an option, the presenting analyst should consider, if possible in consultation with colleagues, the possible impact of such consent upon an ongoing or completed treatment. ● Ask each presenting analyst for a brief statement justifying the strategy chosen for protecting confidentiality within his or her ethical framework. (See Appendix A for a possible form that presenters could complete.) ● Have chairs announce that non-authorized audio or audio-visual recording of presentations containing clinical material is not allowed . Audience members should also be urged to turn off their cell phones, to minimize the risk of this occurring inadvertently.
● Presenting clinical material about candidates or professional colleagues should not be permitted.
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