Providing a good standard of practice and care

All clients are entitled to good standards of practice and care from their practitioners in hypnotherapy. Good standards of practice and care require professional competence; good relationships with clients and colleagues; and commitment to and observance of professional ethics.

Good quality of care

1.      Good quality of care requires competently delivered services that meet the client's needs by practitioners who are appropriately supported and accountable.

2.      Practitioners should give careful consideration to the limitations of their training and experience and work within these limits, taking advantage of available professional support. If work with clients requires the provision of additional services operating in parallel with hypnotherapy, the availability of such services ought to be taken into account, as their absence may constitute a significant limitation.

3.      Good practice involves clarifying and agreeing the rights and responsibilities of both the practitioner and client at appropriate points in their working relationship.

4.      Dual relationships arise when the practitioner has two or more kinds of relationship concurrently with a client, for example client and trainee, friend and client, colleague and supervisee. The existence of a dual relationship with a client is seldom neutral and can have a powerful beneficial or detrimental impact that may not always be easily foreseeable. For these reasons practitioners are required to consider the implications of entering into dual relationships with clients, to avoid entering into relationships that are likely to be detrimental to clients, and to be readily accountable to clients and colleagues for any dual relationships that occur.

5.      Practitioners are encouraged to keep adequate records of their work with clients unless there are sound reasons for not doing so. All records should be accurate, respectful of clients and colleagues and protected from unauthorised disclosure. Practitioners should take into account their responsibilities and their client's rights under data protection legislation and any other legal requirements.

7.    All hypnotherapists, trainers and supervisors are required to have regular and on-going formal supervision/consultative support for their work in accordance with professional requirements. Managers (e.g. Course Administrators)  and researchers are strongly encouraged to review their need for professional and personal support and to obtain appropriate services for themselves.

8.    Regularly monitoring and reviewing one's work is essential to maintaining good practice. It is important to be open to, and conscientious in considering, feedback from colleagues, appraisals and assessments. Responding constructively to feedback helps to advance practice.

9.    Practitioners are required to keep up to date with the latest knowledge and respond to changing circumstances. They should consider carefully their own need for continuing professional development and engage in appropriate educational activities.

11.  The practice of hypnotherapy depends on gaining and honouring the trust of clients. Keeping trust requires:

*attentiveness to the quality of listening and respect offered to clients
*culturally appropriate ways of communicating that are courteous and clear
*respect for privacy and dignity

12.  Clients should be adequately informed about the nature of the services being offered. Practitioners should obtain adequately informed consent from their clients and respect a client's right to withdraw at any point.

13.  Practitioners should ensure that services are normally delivered on the basis of the client's explicit consent. Reliance on implicit consent is more vulnerable to misunderstandings and is best avoided unless there are sound reasons for doing so. Overriding a client's known wishes or consent is a serious matter that requires commensurate justification. Practitioners should be prepared to be readily accountable to clients and colleagues if they override a client's known wishes.

14.  Situations in which clients pose a risk of causing serious harm to themselves or others are particularly challenging for the practitioner. These are situations in which the practitioner should be alert to the possibility of conflicting responsibilities between those concerning their client, other people who may be significantly affected, and society generally. Resolving conflicting responsibilities may require due consideration of the context in which the service is being provided. In all cases, the aim should be to ensure for the client a good quality of care that is as respectful of the client's capacity for self-determination and their trust as circumstances permit.

15.  Working with children and young people requires careful consideration of issues concerning their capacity to give consent to receiving any service independently of someone with parental responsibilities and the management of confidences disclosed by clients.  In general, explicit written consent for minors by an appropriate adult should be obtained before treatment.

18. Practitioners must not abuse their client's trust in order to gain sexual, emotional, financial or any other kind of personal advantage. Sexual relations with clients are prohibited. 'Sexual relations' include intercourse, any other type of sexual activity or sexualised behaviour. Practitioners should think carefully about, and exercise considerable caution before entering into personal or business relationships with former clients and should expect to be professionally accountable if the relationship becomes detrimental to the client or the standing of the profession.

19.  Practitioners should not allow their professional relationships with clients to be prejudiced by any personal views they may hold about lifestyle, gender, age, disability, race, sexual orientation, beliefs or culture.

20.  Practitioners should be clear about any commitment to be available to clients and colleagues and honour these commitments.

21.  Practitioners should not conduct inductions by telephone or any other medium save face to face contact; excepting only induction tapes or other audio media provided to clients with a printed list of instructions for appropriate usage. 

22.  Practitioners should not conduct stage hypnosis.

23.  All practitioners are encouraged to share their professional knowledge and practice in order to benefit their clients and the public.

24.  Practitioners who provide education and training should acquire the skills, attitudes and knowledge required to be competent teachers and facilitators of learning.

25.  Practitioners are required to be fair, accurate and honest in their assessments of their students.

26.  Prior consent is required from clients if they are to be observed, recorded or if their personally identifiable disclosures are to be used for training purposes.

27.  Training providers should clearly state their refund policies to students in writing in advance of the course.  Training providers should invoice all student showing a breakdown of costs and charges.  Refund policies must conform with current legislation. 

Supervising and managing

28.  Practitioners are responsible for clarifying who holds responsibility for the work with the client.

29.  There is a general obligation for all hypnotherapists, supervisors and trainers to receive supervision/consultative support independently of any managerial relationships.

31.  The Society is committed to fostering research that will inform and develop practice. All practitioners are encouraged to support research undertaken on behalf of the profession and to participate actively in research work.

32.  All research should be undertaken with rigorous attentiveness to the quality and integrity both of the research itself and of the dissemination of the results of the research.

33.  The rights of all research participants should be carefully considered and protected. The minimum rights include the right to freely given and informed consent, and the right to withdraw at any point.

36.  Practitioners should respond promptly and appropriately to any complaint received from their clients.

37.  They should endeavour to remedy any harm they may have caused to their clients and to prevent any further harm. An apology may be the appropriate response.

38.  They should discuss the circumstances in which they may have harmed a client with their supervisor or other experienced practitioners in order to ensure that the appropriate steps have been taken to mitigate any harm and to prevent any repetition.

39.  They are required to ensure that their work is adequately covered by insurance for professional indemnity and liability.

40.  If practitioners consider that they have acted in accordance with good practice but their client is not satisfied that this is the case, they may wish to encourage the client to seek a second opinion where this is appropriate and practical.

41.  Clients should be informed about the existence of the Professional Conduct Procedure of the Society and any other applicable complaints or disciplinary procedures. If requested to do so, practitioners should inform their clients about how they may obtain further information concerning these procedures.
 

Responsibilities to all clients

42.  Practitioners have a responsibility to protect clients when they have good reason for believing that other practitioners are placing them at risk of harm.

43   They should raise their concerns with the practitioner concerned in the first instance, unless it is inappropriate to do so. If the matter cannot be resolved, they should review the grounds for their concern and the evidence available to them and, when appropriate, raise their concerns with the practitioner's supervisor or professional body.
 

44.  If they are uncertain what to do, their concerns should be discussed with an experienced colleague, a supervisor or raised with the Society in confidence.

46.  The practitioner is responsible for learning about and taking account of the different protocols, conventions and customs that can pertain to different working contexts and cultures.

47.  All routine referrals to colleagues and other services should be discussed with the client in advance and the client's consent obtained both to making the referral and also to disclosing information to accompany the referral. Reasonable care should be taken to ensure that:

* the recipient of the referral is able to provide the required service;
* any confidential information disclosed during the referral process will be adequately protected;
* the referral will be likely to benefit the client.

48.  Prior to accepting a referral the practitioner should give careful consideration to:

49.  Practitioners are responsible for clarifying the terms on which their services are being offered in advance of the client incurring any financial obligation or other reasonably foreseeable costs or liabilities.

50.  All information about services should be honest, accurate, avoid unjustifiable claims, and be consistent with maintaining the good standing of the profession.

51.  Particular care should be taken over the integrity of presenting qualifications, accreditation, and professional standing.

53.  Practitioners are required to be honest, straightforward and accountable in all financial matters concerning their clients and other professional relationships.

Attending to the practitioner's well-being is essential to sustaining good practice.

55.  Practitioners have a responsibility to themselves to ensure that their work does not become detrimental to their health or well-being by ensuring that the way that they undertake their work is as safe as possible and that they seek appropriate professional support and services as the need arises.

56.  Practitioners are entitled to be treated with proper consideration and respect that is consistent with this Guidance.