Ethics, Boundaries, and Best Practices

Navigating Complex Scenarios in the Pursuit of Optimum Care

December 5, 2025, 8:30am - 12:30pm CST
June 5, 2026, 8:30am - 12:30pm CST
December 4, 2026, 8:30am - 12:30pm CST
Virtual via Zoom
Continuing Education Hours: 4.0

Register

Course Description

This will be a four-hour, interactive approach focusing on the topic of Ethics when working within the field of mental health.  We will examine the main principles of ethics and how these items can both assist and/or complicate your efforts with those we serve.  These issues will include, but not be limited to: payeeship, coercion, decision making, confidentiality, disclosures, and consent.  Additionally, we will have separate time focused upon the complicated component of involuntary care within mental health....and how ethics overlaps in many contexts.  Lastly, we can use this group format to examine cases, complications, and how we partner in this in terms of collaboration and documentation.

Learning Objectives: 

• Examine the need for ethics, its difference from morals, and guiding principles to achieve balance in decision making.
• Review common scenarios where ethics is of note; including but not limited to, payeeship/disclosures/consent/refusal of care.
• Explain how the concept of clinical relationships and notation of boundaries is of import to both provider and patient.
• Process how involuntary mechanisms can lead to dissonance and discomfort when caring for individuals with a focus on practical techniques to best proceed.

Tony Thrasher, D.O., MBA, CPE, DFAPA

Dr. Tony Thrasher is a board-certified psychiatrist employed as the medical director for the Crisis Services branch of the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division.  He received his psychiatric training from Washington University in St. Louis at Barnes Jewish Hospital, and he is the Immediate Past President of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry (AAEP).

He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and he currently serves as the President for both the Wisconsin Psychiatric Association (WPA) and the Wisconsin Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons (WAOPS).
 
In 2023, he is also proud to have served as the Editor for the Oxford Press Primer on Emergency Psychiatry as well as being the Editor for the American Psychiatric Association’s Maintenance of Certification FOCUS journal centering on the core curriculum of Emergency Psychiatry!

Most recently, he was inducted into the American College of Psychiatrists, was named a Top Doctor for 2022 by Milwaukee Magazine, earned his accreditation as a Certified Physician Executive (CPE), and is fortunate to work with Psychiatric Times on a series of Mental Health Minute webinars.  Additionally, he received a 2023 Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).