Ethics and risk management in administrative child and adolescent psychiatry.

This article examines ethics (the philosophic study of "doing the right thing") and risk management (the practice that seeks to manage the likelihood of "doing the wrong thing") and the relationship between them in the context of administrative child and adolescent psychiatry. Issues that affect child and adolescent psychiatrists who manage staff and business units and clinical practitioners who treat and manage individual patients are addressed. Malpractice, budgeting, credentialing, boundaries, assessment, documentation, treatment, research, dangerousness, and confidentiality are among the topics reviewed.