Quote:
Originally Posted by Miswimmy1
It's not a violation. I went over this in VERY much detail with my therapist and this is what she told me. Phone is not a method of secure communication and ts run the risk if they use this method to keep in touch with clients. If they choose to use phone, the client can say whatever they want, and they are supposed to be informed that anything they say isn't necessarily confidential. It's what the t says back to the client that would be an ethical violation. Technically, if they address anything over phone that isn't about scheduling, its a breach of boundaries.
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That last part simply is not true. My T conducts paid, full-length therapy sessions over the phone. I travel a lot for work and, if I'm travelling on therapy day, we have our session over the phone. I've also called her between sessions before and left voicemails for her. Whenever I leave a voicemail, her answering machine says: "You have reached the confidential voicemail box of T." Her voicemail is password protected and as secure as just about any other mode of communication. Honestly, it's probably more secure than talking in her office. If there is someone in the waiting room, there's a greater risk of that person overhearing our conversation than there is of a hacker getting into T's voicemail and caring enough to listen to her messages. In contrast, T's e-mail has a disclaimer at the bottom that says "e-mail is not a secure form of communication." Thus, I know there's a risk that my e-mail might not be confidential... but, again, that would involve someone maliciously hacking into her e-mail or T making an unlikely mistake like forwarding my e-mail to her whole contacts list. Those types of scenarios will probably never occur. They're completely different than having an unprotected voicemail that can be accessed by anyone with T's phone number.