General Confidentiality
Generally, all the information you share with Dr. Swan is held in confidence. As a psychologist, she is bound by both legal and ethical obligations to breech confidentiality under the following circumstances:
- There is a clear and substantial risk of you harming yourself or another identifiable person
- If it is necessary to protect an identifiable child, consistent with legal requirements
- If it is necessary to protect an identifiable vulnerable adult who is unable to seek support or assistance for abuse or neglect
- Where there is a lawful requirement for me to do so such as under a court subpoena
If one of the above situations should to arise, Dr. Swan will make every reasonable effort to discuss this with you and in the case of making a report, she will limit the information shared to what is reasonably necessary to deal with the threat.
Social Media
I do not accept friend requests or contact requests from current or former clients on any social media platform. I believe that by adding clients to these sites can compromise your confidentiality and our respective privacy. It may also blur the boundaries of our professional relationship. I have created a business page where I post some information of interest. This is for informative purposes only and should not replace receiving professional services. You are welcome to ‘Like’ this page, in which case be aware that others can see you have liked my page. You can also ‘follow’ for updates and no one will see you follow. The choice is yours. Please note that if you follow me, I will not follow you back. If you have any questions about this, please bring them up when we talk next and we can discuss more.
Interacting with Dr. Swan Outside Sessions
Please do not use SMS text messaging or social media messaging to contact me. These sites are not secure, and I may not read these messages in a timely fashion. Please do not tag me or engage me openly online as this could compromise your confidentiality. It also creates the possibility that I may have to include this information in your medical file, which has the possibility of creating legal or medical complications down the road.
If you need to reach me between sessions, please reach out by phone at 250-878-9112 or by email jamie@thriving-potential.com. These should be for quick administrative items such as billing or scheduling only. Please do not email me content of your therapy sessions, as email is not completely secure or confidential. If you do choose to email me, please be aware that all emails are retained in the logs of yours and my internet service provider. While unlikely that someone would access these logs, it is in theory available for them to access. You should also know that any emails you send me become a part of your record along with any responses I send.
For clients who participate in telepsychology , please be aware that I use a secure video-conferencing software and that use of skype, facetime or other popular platforms is not secure and therefore will not be used for rendering psychological services.
Location Based Services
If you use location-based services such as GPS or find my friends on your smart phone, please be aware that it is possible others will become aware that you are a therapy client due to regular check ins at my office. I do not offer my location as a ‘check-in’ spot on any social media for this reason. Please be aware of this risk if you are intentionally ‘checking-in’ from my office or have passive location services enabled on your phone.