Critical Values Based Practice Network

C-VBP-N

Author Archive

Ethics in Clinical Practice: What’s the right thing to do?

Written by Philip Houghton on . Posted in Clinical Psychology Bite-Size

Ethics in Clinical Practice: What’s the right thing to do?

Issue 28 – July 2011

Author: Phil  Houghton (philip.houghton@nottshc.nhs.uk)

Key points

  • Within clinical practice we are often faced with the question “what’s the right thing to do?”
  • Whilst we can not guarantee making the “right” decision, ethical frameworks exist which can help us make decisions in the right way 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Written by Philip Houghton on . Posted in Clinical Psychology Bite-Size

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Issue 23 – July 2010

Author: Phil  Houghton (philip.houghton@nottshc.nhs.uk)

Key points

  • The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) model argues that much suffering is caused by trying to avoid or control painful experiences.
  • ACT focuses on helping people to accept their painful experiences, choose valued directions in life and take action towards those values.
  • A criticism of the ACT model is that it pays little attention to people’s social context and the inequality that means some people experience more aversive and painful events than others, and also have less resources to address these difficulties. 

Values Based Practice

Written by Philip Houghton on . Posted in Clinical Psychology Bite-Size

Values Based Practice

Issue 9 – December 2008

Author: Phil Houghton (philip.houghton@nottshc.nhs.uk)

Key points

  • Values Based Practice (VBP) stresses that clinical decisions are not just about “evidence”, but are influenced by the differing values people have
  • The strengths of VBP are that it argues that the service user perspective should be the start of any clinical discussion and highlights the weaknesses of Evidence based Practice
  • The major weakness of VBP is that it fails to acknowledge that the people involved in any decision may have vastly different amounts of power to influence the outcome