Competencies and Ethical Governance for Psychedelic‑Assisted Therapies: A Practice‑Embedded Quality‑Improvement Framework.

Authors

Shannon Dames, Keith Williams, Allan Campbell, Wes Taylor, Marti Harder, Michelle Gagnon, Geraldine Manson, Pamela Kryskow

Published in

Journal of evaluation in clinical practice. Volume 32. Issue 5. Pages e70556.

Abstract

Psychedelic‑assisted therapy (PaT) is a rapidly expanding practice area that spans multiple disciplines and regulated and unregulated settings, without shared ownership by any single profession. As a result, training and service delivery are advancing more rapidly than the development and evaluation of research‑informed governance frameworks from public and academic bodies. Consequently, practitioners may rely on guidance that varies in transparency, evidence base and methodological rigour, leading to inconsistent safety and ethical expectations.
In response to this gap, we describe a competency framework developed over a 4‑year, practice‑embedded quality improvement (QI) process focused on governance, safety and accountability.
Within a post-graduate PaT programme at a Canadian university, we used an iterative QI approach that integrated evidence‑informed literature with recurring feedback from learners, faculty, supervised practice partners and cultural knowledge‑keeper guidance. This process is centred on developmental learning, cultural responsiveness and safeguards appropriate to non‑ordinary states of consciousness.
The framework centres on both doing (technical and clinical aspects of practice) and being (relational presence and ethical stance). These dimensions are supported by a programme‑level Code of Ethics addressing safeguards related to safety, confidentiality and privacy, transparency, equity and cultural accountability, competence, environmental stewardship and power and boundary management, including touch and sexual boundaries. The framework operationalizes five competency domains: (1) therapeutic presence and trustworthiness; (2) culture and identity; (3) historical, political, and regulatory literacy; (4) evidence‑informed clinical knowledge; and (5) a trauma‑ and equity‑informed therapeutic process spanning screening, preparation, informed consent, team roles and integration.
Rather than a fixed consensus standard or externally validated competency model, this framework offers a practice-embedded, QI-derived design logic that can be locally adapted across diverse contexts. Its contribution is governance-oriented: clarifying ethical guardrails, developmental competencies and revision processes for future implementation and evaluation.

PMID:
42574657
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 11 Aug 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.