CHARTER OF ETHICS - New SwissMed School

PREAMBLE

The Charter constitutes a set of guiding principles for the work of SWISSMED SCHOOL.

As an integral part of SWISSMED SCHOOL, the Charter will also help to guide the future activities of people trained at the school. It is intended for medical practitioners, therapists, teachers, students, researchers, and to anyone else.

SWISSMED SCHOOL’s Vocation

SWISSMED SCHOOL’s vocational mission lies in working to improve health worldwide, in the light of mankind’s needs in terms of individual and public health, using a holistic approach which respects the ecological and social environments.

As a private institution, SWISSMED SCHOOL is determined to fulfil its mission nationally and internationally.

SWISSMED SCHOOL’s Spirit

We strive constantly to develop four essential qualities, which are considered complementary to, and inseparable from, an ethical approach. Thus they represent a constant goal, as well as a source of inspiration at all levels of action by SWISSMED SCHOOL members.

Our aim is excellence, without hesitating to call ourselves into question or to reconsider the way we work. We strive for the highest quality.

We place great value on honesty, clarity, fruitful collaboration, dialogue, and concertation. We act with total integrity and respect for national and international laws. We conduct our work in a context of good governance.

We favour a spirit of openness based on mutual confidence and respect, in order to build healthy, durable relationships with the greatest regard for the liberty, conscience and feelings of the individual. This respect for liberty means that our programmes and teaching are optimally understood and assimilated by the individual.

We take full account of a person’s complex balances regarding his/her reality — physical, psychological, and spiritual. We consider those we accompany to be on absolutely equal terms with us. Our point of departure is that we know no better than the person in question. To be made the most effective, the methods we adopt require an agreement that is discussed and accepted!

Science and Teaching First

The work of teachers, doctors, therapists and researchers at SWISSMED SCHOOL must not be placed second to any outside interest of an industrial or economic nature.

SWISSMED SCHOOL is also a professional training school which, in its teaching, strives to remain independent, morally and scientifically, of all political and/or economic authority.

Respect

Teacher-student interaction is far more than mere communication or the overseeing of the acquisition of knowledge.

Doctor-therapist/client interaction is far more than mere communication or the application of a treatment.

Both situations involve dialogue governed by a spirit of recognition and mutual respect — thus possible only between partners who are motivated and open to one another.

TEACHING

Quality of Teaching

SWISSMED SCHOOL sees itself as a place where students have a desire to learn,

where clarity of expression, realism and openness are constantly sought after for the quality of teaching;
where the working environment is secure and healthy, so that personal talent and merit are recognised;
where, on the contrary, dissimulation and idleness, intellectual or physical, or self- satisfaction, are reckoned deleterious to both student and teacher; and
where the development of sensitivity and the broadening of the soul are part of the course.

Level of Instruction

SWISSMED SCHOOL is responsible for ensuring a high level of instruction through its teaching modules and the contents of classes, and by the fair evaluation of students. We will seek to ensure clear selection and evaluation criteria. Course content and teaching methods are under constant review.

Plurality of Opinion

The nature of ideologies, of political or economic diktats, are openly debated. Teachers make sure to help students cultivate a critical objectivity regarding their studies. There is respect for personal privacy, and recognition of an equitable balance between private and professional life.

Values

Teaching is a privileged way of transmitting traditional values, opening up motivating and stimulating perspectives on development.

High-Level Instruction

SWISSMED SCHOOL is careful to maintain an atmosphere suitable for teaching, for development, and for the dissemination of knowledge.

The school ensures that teachers are readily accessible, with ongoing review and a ready ear, for the most effective transmission of knowledge and thus a high level of qualification.

Respect for Personal Rights

SWISSMED SCHOOL ensures that people’s rights are respected, in the sense of both legal and basic human rights.

Particular attention is paid to information, with student participation expected in various activities related to SWISSMED SCHOOL and to professional policy.

CLINICAL PRACTICE

SWISSMED SCHOOL’s main aim is to promote, to conserve and to restore physical and mental health on the individual and public levels.

Equality – Freedom

SWISSMED SCHOOL promotes a clinical practice based on a caring approach involving listening, compassion, advice and/or treatment, with the greatest respect for freedom of conscience and personal feelings.

Respect for such freedom implies adapting to the individual being treated, while respecting his/her freedom of choice without discrimination regarding his/her condition or beliefs.

Authority of the Professional Practitioner

SWISSMED SCHOOL practitioners undertake to be conscious of the complexity and rich diversity of the human individual. They belong to an area in which the conscience, in its mysterious origin, interacts with the unconscious in the widest sense of the term.

At any given moment, the professional practitioner will act to protect anyone in a weakened or vulnerable state, or whose integrity or dignity is threatened.

The Professional Practitioner

SWISSMED SCHOOL ensures that the impetus necessary for the accomplishment of the practitioner’s noble task is kept vigorously active by all the professional means available to his/her work, with total respect for the standards of honour and probity.

Morals and Decency

A SWISSMED SCHOOL carer is bound never to exert any sort of pressure — physical, biological, psychological, moral, religious, spiritual — that could in any way result in a limitation of the free will of the person being cared for.

SWISSMED SCHOOL will always respect the growth time necessary for each stage of development.

Moves of a seductive or sexual nature are prohibited, and can never be considered justifiable on therapeutic grounds.

An emotional involvement exists quite naturally in a therapeutic context. But it must always serve as a means of increasing our self-knowledge and of helping as objectively as possible. It must never serve self-interested sentimental or pecuniary ends.

This demands of the practitioners, at all times, strict self-awareness and control over their own projections.

People will be kept constantly informed of any decisions being planned, of the reasons for them, and of their consequences. The practitioner will at all times guarantee not to betray the relationship of trust.

SWISSMED SCHOOL carers will undertake nothing beyond the bounds of their qualifications. But they will maintain and improve these, the better to provide the required services. Practitioners make sure not to prolong the care or treatment relationship for their own ends.

Professional secrecy

All SWISSMED SCHOOL personnel are honour-bound to observe professional secrecy in its strict legal sense. They undertake not to divulge, under any circumstances, what is confided to them in the exercise of their profession. Private personal secrecy is to be respected, save in the context of a supervision, itself subject to professional secrecy.

Remuneration

SWISSMED SCHOOL tariffs are clearly advertised. They reflect the interests of all involved, are based on the services provided, and take account of particular needs.

CONCLUSION

Under the aims of this charter, the activities of SWISSMED SCHOOL favour scientific and cultural interests over marketing ones.

SWISSMED SCHOOL recognises from experience that, without specific practical experience, no mere diploma can endow a teacher, a doctor, a therapist or a researcher with the quality of “professional”.

Similarly, a diploma is not in itself a criterion for a recognisable professional contribution in the various areas of SWISSMED SCHOOL’s operations (teaching, therapy, research). On the basis of this charter, the participants’ responsibilities must be assigned in accordance with their level of training, professional experience, and individual maturity.