CPS CPS Ethics & Professional Standards 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Informed consent in a prevention program means participants:
- Must pay before joining
- Are told about the program's purpose, their rights, and any risks before agreeing to participate (Correct answer)
- Sign a confidentiality pledge
- Complete a pre-test before enrollment
Correct answer: Are told about the program's purpose, their rights, and any risks before agreeing to participate
Informed consent ensures participants voluntarily agree to involvement after receiving full information about the program.
Question 2: When a prevention specialist suspects child abuse involving a program participant, they are ethically and legally required to:
- Discuss it only with the participant
- Wait for more evidence before acting
- Report the suspicion to the appropriate child protective authority (Correct answer)
- Keep it confidential under 42 CFR Part 2
Correct answer: Report the suspicion to the appropriate child protective authority
Mandatory reporting laws require prevention professionals to report suspected child abuse to designated authorities regardless of confidentiality obligations.
Question 3: Professional boundaries in prevention work are important because they:
- Limit the specialist's workload
- Protect both the specialist and participants from exploitation or harm (Correct answer)
- Reduce paperwork requirements
- Help specialists avoid difficult conversations
Correct answer: Protect both the specialist and participants from exploitation or harm
Maintaining professional boundaries safeguards participants from exploitation and protects specialists from ethical violations.
Question 4: Which ethical principle requires prevention specialists to avoid actions that harm clients or communities?
- Beneficence
- Nonmaleficence (Correct answer)
- Autonomy
- Justice
Correct answer: Nonmaleficence
Nonmaleficence is the ethical principle obligating professionals to 'do no harm' to those they serve.
Question 5: A prevention specialist discovers their program is using an intervention not listed on SAMHSA's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP/evidence registry). The best response is to:
- Continue using it without question
- Advocate for reviewing and replacing it with an evidence-based alternative (Correct answer)
- Expand its use to other sites
- Ignore the issue since it appears to be working
Correct answer: Advocate for reviewing and replacing it with an evidence-based alternative
Prevention ethics require using evidence-based practices; specialists should advocate for adopting registry-approved interventions.
Question 6: The concept of 'scope of practice' for a CPS means:
- How far they can travel for work
- The geographic area they serve
- Performing only those activities for which they are trained and credentialed (Correct answer)
- The number of clients they may serve
Correct answer: Performing only those activities for which they are trained and credentialed
Scope of practice defines the competencies and activities a credentialed professional is qualified to perform ethically.
CPS CPS Ethics & Professional Standards 2
Informed consent in a prevention program means participants: