Summary of Topics for Board Exam Review Ms.

Macion Special Topics M (6:00-9:00)

1. Ethics

I am interested to know more about Ethics because I feel that there are many who still go by
their common sense and are not aware about the ethical concerns of a particular situation. A
sample question was discussed in our RGO review by Sir Marc Maceda: What would you do if
you were a human resource manager and a man was applying to your company but you’ve
heard rumors about this man that he steals from his coworkers? (Answer Options: (A) reject him
immediately (B) hope and pray that he doesn’t pass the screening (C) tell your supervisor. Sir
Maceda said that the correct answer was B. Basing from my common sense, I would have
chosen A or C but then those choices would’ve been unethical because no one should be
discriminated based on rumors only and they have the right to at least apply for the job and go
through the screening process. I believe ethics is a very important topic to discuss due to the
fact that most of the board exam questions are situational-type. With regards to psychological
research, manipulations may subject participants to undesirable or even harmful experiences
and could put the researcher in a lot of trouble. Researchers must always remember that they
have a duty to respect the rights and dignity of their research participants. Although it is easy to
read about the ethical principles in psychology, I feel that is harder to apply these ethical
principles across a variety of situational scenarios.

2. Differential Diagnosis

The topic I want to focus in doing the review of the board subjects is differential diagnosis. I
chose this topic because I find it interesting and at the same time confusing, confusing because
there are some disorders that have the same symptoms and sometimes it’s hard to tell the
difference. I want to know the techniques or ways on how to determine the difference of these
disorders. Some examples that are confusing are the difference between ASD and ADHD,
obsessive personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, somatic type delusional
disorder and somatic symptom disorder, and persecutory type delusional disorder and paranoid
personality disorder because there are some symptoms that overlap with each other. It's really
hard to determine and differentiate.