CLINICIANS EXCHANGE LISTSERV PARTICIPATION AGREEMENT:
This agreement is needed due to the professional nature of this forum. Participation in the forum constitutes acceptance of this participation agreement.
1) All conversations must be conducted in as respectful a manner as possible. The moderators hate playing referee but may do so when needed.
2) Participants are REQUIRED to sign all posts with professional credentials – your first and last name, credentials, geographical location at the large territory level (states in the USA, province/territory/etc. outside the USA). EMAIL ADDRESSES ARE OPTIONAL BUT HIGHLY ENCOURAGED. (Other information like phone number, employer, town or city, etc. is allowed of course but not required.) Please position this information directly under your reply.
3) Members should be mental health professionals, retirees, or graduate students. On very rare occasions, the moderator/s may approve persons with professional interests and experience roughly equal to those of other group members who don’t meet the usual requirements.
4) List moderators make a best-effort determination to only allow members with the proper credentials. It is understood however that moderators can only put so much time and effort into verifying credentials and that the occasional inappropriate person could find their way into membership. Graduate students who later elect not to become licensed are required to resign from forum membership once it becomes clear that they are pursuing a different career path.
5) Advertising and marketing on the forum is expressly prohibited. Repeated marketing efforts may subject a member to being placed on moderated status or banned from posting. Members MAY place brief contact information and websites in their signature that invite interested parties to contact them for more information. In self-introductions, members may allude to work that they do that might be of interest to other therapists (“I provide CEU workshops to therapists.”) An example of a prohibited posting would be a flyer to a specific workshop.
6) This forum is not confidential. All messages are archived on the web and can be read by members of the group. Do not say anything that would compromise anyone’s confidentiality or violate your professional ethics in any way. This is an open door meeting and should be treated as such (despite the precaution of best-effort membership verifications by the moderators). You may refer to a clinical experience, with the identity of the client carefully protected, in a theoretical discussion – i.e. as an illustration. This would not require specific client consent if you have a general agreement in place with your clients to the effect that you might, from time to time, refer to client work in professional contexts such as journals, e-group discussion, and teaching — for illustrative purposes.
7) If we want to present a case for consultation, we follow a three-step process:
a) We obtain the client’s specific informed consent.
b) We alter the non-essential details in order to protect the client’s right to privacy.
c) Rather than posting the case directly to the list, we send it “back-channel” (by email) to the moderator. The moderator will post the case to the list, so as to further protect the client’s right to privacy.
Some specific professional ethics codes may have stricter rules regarding Internet case consultations than this group requires – please consult your relevant ethical codes. Remember that it is your responsibility to abide by the rules of your discipline and your licensing body.
8) Do not forward or redistribute e-mail to or from this forum without the permission of the original author.
9) The settings for this forum do allow some types of e-mail attachments. Files to be shared with other forum members end up in the list archives attached to the email you sent rather than a separate group files download area.
10) Neither the forum moderator/s, nor any contributor can be held liable in any way for any information and/or data made available, or omitted, from information distributed to the subscribers to this forum. The information distributed may or may not have been checked for accuracy.
11) By your use of this forum, you agree to hold harmless the forum owners, moderators, and all contributors against any and all claims arising out of such use, regardless of the cause, effects, or fault.
Version: 11-02-20