For your professional ethics edification in April
Once a month the ACPE Professional Ethics Commission (PEC) posts a couple of statements from our Code of Professional Ethics for ACPE Members. Each posting is accompanied by a brief personal reflection from a member of the PEC discussing some ways this person lives these commitments*. April’s statements are:Rev. Michael Rogers D.Min, Director of Pastoral Care and ACPE Certified Educator, Baptist Health Medical Center, Little Rock, AR
Learning and providing care to others needs to be collaborative work. Living in a community challenges each of us to learn from one another and see the value of hearing the voices of others. As educators and clinicians, it is vital to maintain professional relationships with other educators and clinicians. I am the only certified educator in my center, and I intentionally build relationships with other educators in different centers to learn, collaborate, and hear different ideas. I also intentionally build relationships with individuals who work in administration, and other disciplines in my center, affiliated with my center, and in my community. These relationships help in various ways, from offering didactics to understanding the community's needs, and they allow for the story of our CPE program to be told and celebrated. As an example of the positive aspects of collaborating and building relationships, I recently gave a presentation to our hospital board, and after hearing the presentation one of the board members was inspired to offer a scholarship to help more students be able to enter our program!
Collaborating with others helps me model for my students the importance of staying within my scope of practice. I want to accurately show my professional qualifications and what gifts I bring to the team while knowing when to refer to others that are trained to handle things that are outside of my scope of practice.