Ethics and Impairment Committee (EIC)

The Membership Committee and the Ethics and Impairment Committee of SFCP encourage all members and candidates to create a professional will to help protect their patients from preventable disruption in case of the analyst’s illness, impairment, or death.

Many colleagues have found that this important task is surprisingly difficult to pursue to completion, because of its emotional impact and because of the wish to avoid thinking about its implications.

The task itself, however, is technically fairly straightforward and while we are providing you with a number of resources on the subject — papers about professional wills and sample specimens — we encourage you to keep this simple. It is probably best to create a basic will which covers the essentials in a direct, efficient manner, while maintaining the option of expanding or modifying it immediately or at some point in the future.

We suggest taking the following essential steps:

1. DESIGNATE of one or more colleagues to manage your practice and deal with your patients.
2. CREATE a list of your patients and how to contact them.
3. PROVIDE to your colleague(s) your office keys, information on access to your patient schedule and to your voice mail system (including password)
4. WRITE a simple professional will. You may want to include a list of others to be contacted, including professional organizations, malpractice carrier, office landlord, accountant and attorney.

You will no doubt think of additional features and provisions for your will and this should prove very useful. Nevertheless we suggest that you move ahead with the basics and avoid being delayed.

Feel free to contact any EIC member with questions or requests for assistance. We would be happy to be of help.