The Law and Emotional Freedom Techniques

The following is an outline of the law as it stands in England in 2005 and presented in good faith, being intended solely as a guide, rather than as a full and all encompassing explanation of the situation. The AAMET does not take any responsibility for the accuracy of this outline and practitioners are advised to take professional legal advice should they require definitive rulings in this area

1. It is the responsibility of practitioners to be acquainted with and to comply with the Laws of the country in which they practice, and they must also be aware of the local laws if they practice outside their home country

2. In general the Law in the United Kingdom is permissive.  That is that one can do anything not proscribed by Law. There are a number of Laws which impinge on the  work of the Therapist and these will be discussed below.

3. Therapists must comply with Local Council Regulations and the advice of the Environmental Health Officer regarding the provision of adequate facilities, such as heating, lighting, ventilation, toilets, electrical and gas installations, smoke alarms and fire extinguishers

4. In order to make the ensuing paragraphs comprehensible, it is necessary to explain that the law of England is divided into two main categories known as the Criminal Law and Civil Law respectively. The Criminal Law governs the conduct of members of the community vis-à-vis the State; the Civil Law governs the rights and liabilities of citizens vis-à-vis one another. If a person contravenes the Criminal Law he is prosecuted by the authorities and, if found guilty, fined or imprisoned for the offence. If a person contravenes the Civil Law he is sued by the injured party and, if the claim against him succeeds, he is ordered to pay damages as monetary redress for the injury sustained by the plaintiff.

5. The Criminal Law is for the most part contained in Acts of Parliament whereas the Civil Law is largely case law, that is to say, it consists of the body of decisions taken by the courts in cases that have come before them.

6. The principal statutory restrictions (the infringement of which would constitute a criminal offence) to which practitioners are subject are contained in Acts of Parliament which have, from time to time, been passed with the object of protecting the public against the unscrupulous activities of quacks and charlatans in the field of human and veterinary medicine. These are discussed individually below.

7. So far as the Civil Law is concerned, the only risk is the one incurred by all professional people alike, namely, an action for damages for professional negligence. This is discussed below in paragraph 13 below

8. Prohibited Appellation  In order to enable the public to distinguish between those who are professionally qualified and those who are not, the law makes it a criminal offence for anyone who does not hold the relevant qualification to use a number of specified titles or to use any other title or description which suggests or implies that he or she is on the statutory register of the persons who hold those qualifications. Some of the titles relevant to EFT practitioners are: Dietician; Doctor; Nurse; Occupational Therapist; Veterinary Practitioner. It need hardly be said that a practitioner must scrupulously avoid the foregoing titles unless of course he is additionally qualified in any of the fields concerned when he is entitled to use the appropriate description.

9. Prohibited Functions  In addition to prohibiting unqualified persons from using the titles and descriptions specified above, the law also precludes them from performing certain specified functions in the field of medicine. Some of these are :- The practice of Midwifery; The treatment of Venereal Disease; The practice of Veterinary Surgery. These are discussed separately below :-

9.1 Midwifery Except in cases of sudden or urgent necessity, it is an offence for anyone other than a certified midwife to attend a woman in childbirth without medical supervision, or for anyone other than a registered nurse to attend for reward as nurse  a woman in childbirth or during a period of 10 days thereafter.

9.2 Veterinary  In addition to providing that an unregistered person may not use the title 'Veterinary Surgeon' or 'Veterinary Practitioner', the law also makes it an offence for an unregistered person to practise veterinary surgery.

The relevant Act of Parliament (the Veterinary Surgeons Act l966) defined veterinary surgery as "the art and science of veterinary surgery and medicine" and states that, without prejudice to the generality of that definition, it shall be taken to include the diagnosis of disease in, and injuries to, animals, including tests performed on animals for diagnostic purposes; the giving of advice based upon such diagnosis; the medical or surgical treatment of animals; the performance of surgical operations on animals.

The rendering in an emergency of first aid to animals for the purpose of saving life or relieving pain is permissible. What constitutes an emergency must be a question for the judgement of the individual practitioner.  It is also admissible to treat an animal if it has been first seen by a veterinary.

9.3 Venereal Disease.  Under the Venereal Disease Act 1917 it is illegal to treat Syphilis, Gonorrhoea or Soft Chancre for reward unless you are a registered medical practitioner.

10. Advertising    The law makes it an offence to publish any advertisement which:

(a) offers to treat, cure or prescribe a remedy or advice for cancer, or

(b) refers to any article in terms calculated to lead to its use in the treatment of cancer.

It is worth noting in passing that there is no prohibition on treating a patient for cancer - the offence is in advertising treatment. It is not possible to give a comprehensive definition of what the word "advertisement" would be held to include in these contexts. The question would turn on the circumstances of each particular case; but it is not exclusively confined to advertisements published in the press, for instance a circular letter (issued in response to a request prompted by a press advertisement offering details on application) which stated that a certain product would cure cancer has been held to constitute an advertisement.

At all times advertising should comply with standards laid down by the British Code of Advertising Practice and meet the requirements of the Advertising Standards Authority.

11. Treatment of Children.  It is an offence under the law for the parent or guardian of a child under 16 to fail to provide adequate medical aid for the child. Thus a parent or guardian who consults a practitioner in respect of a child for whom he is responsible risks prosecution for failure to discharge his statutory duty.

It should be observed that the law does not prohibit a practitioner of any alternative or complementary technique from treating children. The importance of this matter for practitioners arises by reason of the doctrine of the Criminal Law known as "aiding and abetting". Under this doctrine, if a parent or guardian is guilty of an offence (whether of commission or omission) at which the therapist connives or assists, the therapist is said to have aided and abetted an offence and therefore to be himself also guilty of that offence. If a practitioner clearly explains to the parent or guardian of a child under 16 the nature of the obligation imposed by the law, then it is most unlikely that a successful prosecution could be brought against the practitioner for aiding and abetting the statutory offence by agreeing to treat the child.

There is no legal requirement on a private practitioner to report cases of child abuse, although a therapist would be justified in doing so “in the public's interest”.  This may not be so in the case of practitioners working within a Statuary Setting as their contracts of employment may be such as to make this a requirement.

When working with a child the matter of confidentiality is difficult.  A therapist in private practice can work directly with a child and maintain confidentiality.  However, the parent/guardian of the child usually makes payment for the therapeutic work and is thus there is an assumed contract between the parent/guardian and the therapist which could demand the breach of that confidentiality.

12. Professional Negligence. The meaning of the doctrine of negligence in English law is, very broadly, that in their contacts with others therapists must have certain regard for the other person’s interests and that, if through some act of commission or omission committed without sufficient regard for another person's interest, that other person sustains injury, the therapist is liable to pay damages as monetary redress for the injury inflicted. The nature and extent of the regard which one person is required to have for another or, as it is put in law, the "duty of care" he owes the other depends upon the nature of the contact or relationship between them.

The basic principal is set out in case law :-

"You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour". [Lord Atkin - Donoghue v Stevenson 1932}

12.1 The relationship of practitioner and patient, like that of adviser and client, automatically imposes on the practitioner a duty to observe a certain standard of care and skill in the treatment or advice he gives. Failure to attain to that standard exposes the practitioner to the risk of an action for damages.

12.2 What, then, is professional negligence? It is not merely being wrong although there are patients who tend to think it is. It may, broadly speaking, take one of two forms: either lack of the requisite knowledge and skill to undertake the case at all, or else, while possessing the necessary knowledge and skill, failure to apply it properly.

A ‘professional’ person of any kind is by definition one who professes to have certain special knowledge or skill not possessed by the layman and, in general, a practitioner of any profession is bound to possess and exercises the knowledge, care and skill of an ordinarily competent practitioner of that profession. A person cannot, on the other hand, be held responsible for failing to exercise skill which he does not either express or imply to claim to possess.

Thus, where medical treatment is concerned the standard required of a registered medical practitioner in general practice is that of an ordinarily competent doctor, whereas a more exacting standard is imposed on a specialist; and anyone who, although not a registered practitioner, claimed either expressly or impliedly to have the same skill as a doctor would be judged by reference to the standards which apply to doctors.

It will therefore be seen that the knowledge and skill which practitioners profess to have is of crucial importance in the context of professional negligence. In order that they are not judged by standards that do not properly apply to them, it is essential that practitioners should, whenever the question arises, make it abundantly clear that they are not doctors, that they do not hold a qualification recognised by law, and that they do not claim to possess the same knowledge or purport to exercise the same skill as doctors.

Assuming that the position had been established from the outset in any given case in which an issue of professional negligence arose, it will be seen that it would follow that the standard of knowledge, care and skill by reference to which the practitioner's advice and treatment should properly be tested would be that of an ordinarily competent practitioner. What then, is that standard?

It would be hard to say in the case of some therapies where the line denoting a minimum standard of reasonable competence in dealing with a particular case should be drawn. Proof that the case had been analysed and treated in accordance with the methods and precepts taught to students would be useful evidence in rebutting the charge of negligence. There is, nevertheless, one over-riding principle which applies to the practise of any kind of medical or quasi-medical technique. That principle is that when the circumstances are such that the practitioner knows, or should know, that a case is beyond the scope of his particular skill, it becomes his duty either to call in a more skilful person or to take other steps to ensure that the patient no longer relies implicitly on his skill alone.

One of the most important attributes for every practitioner to have at each succeeding stage of is career is some awareness of the limits of their capacity. When they feel that point has been reached in any particular case they should not hesitate to seek another option.

13. False and Misleading Statements The law on this subject was greatly expanded by the Misrepresentations Act l967 and the Trade Descriptions Act l968.

Under the l967 Act, a patient/client who engages the services of a practitioner and pays fees for treatment which proves unsuccessful could recover these fees (and any other expenses incurred as a result of the unsuccessfulness of the treatment) as damages for breach of contract if he could show that he was induced to engage the practitioner's services by means of a misrepresentation made by the practitioner about the efficacy of the treatment.

Under the l968 Act any statement about the properties of goods or the nature of services offered which is false, misleading or inaccurate can give rise to prosecution.. A person guilty of an offence under the Act is liable, on summary conviction, to a fine and, on conviction on indictment, to a fine or to imprisonment or both.

As EFT practitioners do not sell or supply goods, the main importance of this Act lies in its provisions concerning false statements as to services. Broadly, it is an offence for a person to make a statement about the nature of any services offered, which is false to a material degree if he knows it is false. In that connection it is particularly noteworthy that the Act provides that, in relation to any services consisting of or including the application of any treatment, a false statement about the nature of the service shall be taken to include false statements about the effect of the treatment.

Although these provisions occur in a Statute relating to trade, professional services are not expressly excluded and, it must be assumed that they also apply to persons who offer professional services. It would therefore by unwise for a practitioner to make any statement about himself, his qualifications or experience, his ability to diagnose and treat or the beneficial effect of treatment in general unless he knew positively that such statement was true and what is more, could prove it to be true. This only serves to emphasise the importance of the point already made above that practitioners should exercise great restraint in the terms they use to describe their own abilities and the powers of alternative or complementary medicine in general.

It is however pertinent to observe both in this context and in the context of professional negligence that wilful and reckless exaggeration is capable of being held in law to constitute fraud. For this reason it is vital that practitioners should exercise great restraint in the terms they use to describe their own abilities and the powers of natural medicine in general. Any such statement should be as objective as it can possibly be. In this matter, not only is discretion the better part of valour, but modesty the better part of confidence.

14. Notifiable Diseases.  Two Acts regulate the requirements for notifying the Authorities with regard to various diseases.  They are the Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act (1984) and the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Act 1988.  Both of these Acts make it the legal responsibility of the patient’s GP to notify the Authorities in the case of these diseases, and a Complementary Therapist is not required to do so. It is for therapists to decide if they wish to report a notifiable disease in individual cases.

Notifiable diseases under the Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act 1984 are as follows: Cholera, Plague, Relapsing Fever, Smallpox, Typhus, Food Poisoning. Under the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1988 the diseases are as follows: Acute Encephalitis, Acute Poliomyelitis, Anthrax, Diphtheria, Dysentery (Amoebic or Bacillary), Leprosy, Leptospirosis, Malaria, Measles, Meningitis, Meningococcal Septicaemia (without Meningitis), Mumps, Opthalmia Neonatorium, Paratyphoid Fever, Rabies, Rubella, Scarlet Fever, Tetanus, Tuberculosis, Typhoid Fever, Viral Hemorrhagic Fever, Viral Hepatitis, Whooping Cough, Yellow Fever.

It should be noticed that AIDS is not a Notifiable Disease under either of the Acts. There is a voluntary reporting scheme and clients suspected of suffering from AIDS and such clients should be encouraged to report it in confidence to “The Director, PHLS Communicateable Disease Surveillance Centre, 61 Colindlae Avenue, London NW9 5EQ.

15. Confidentiality.  Confidentiality has been mentioned above with reference to notifiable diseases, AIDS and children. However, there is no protection in Law for the therapist who claims the details of the therapist-client interaction are confidential.  Consequently, the therapist should not offer the client a promise of absolute confidentiality.  There are a number of places in the Law where disclosure can be demanded and therapists who refuse disclosure will render themselves liable to prosecution.