A clinical will is essential for every therapist. It consists of the arrangements that therapists should make for the confidential welfare and support of their clients and closure of confidential aspects of their practice in the unexpected event of their death or serious illness or incapacity to continue to work.

Nobody wants to think that this will happen, but the coronavirus pandemic has brought severe illness and death to the fore for all of us. Yet even without this, we are all sadly vulnerable to illness, accidents or untimely death. As therapists, we have a professional and ethical duty to our clients to make adequate provision for these eventualities.

The professional bodies such as BPC, UKCP and BACP generally require therapists to nominate two qualified therapists to act on a therapist's behalf in the event of incapacity and to carry out the terms of the clinical will. These may be called Professional Executors, Trustees or the like. Here I use the term Clinical Executors 'CEs' . While relatively little detail has been provided in the past, these bodies have lately drawn up more detailed guidelines see, for example, BACP Doc. GPiA 104 and the Jan. 2020 notes from BPC's Ethics and Professional Standards Committee . Therapists should check all the provisions of the professional bodies to which they are affiliated for detailed guidance. Here I give a general introduction to the clinical will and to some of the basic issues to consider.

What is a clinical will for?

Your clinical will deals with the arrangements for informing and supporting your clients, trainees and supervisees as appropriate in the event of your unexpected death or incapacity. The fundamental concepts are:

• Support, containment and ethical management of clients in informing them and helping them decide what they want to do next and how to go about this;
• Terminating ethically and responsibly aspects of the therapist's practice that require client confidentiality to be preserved and/or specialist knowledge or expertise;
• Strict preservation of the confidentiality integral to the therapeutic alliance.