What is your perception on professional boundaries?
Professional boundaries are guidelines that help to keep a nurse and patient’s relationship professional. Professional boundaries help to keep the nurses focused on patient care and the patients focus on meeting their health care related goals.
Give one example for each of the following and explain- Professional boundary, boundary crossing and boundary violation.
Professional boundaries are the spaces between the nurse’s power and the patient’s vulnerability National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), (2014). An example of a nurse using professional boundaries would be if the patient offered the nurse a gift, and the nurse responds with thank you, but we are not allowed to accept gifts, it is my job to provide patient care. Then the nurse reports the incident to their supervisor.
Boundary crossings are brief excursions across professional lines of behavior that may be inadvertent, thoughtless or even purposeful, while attempting to meet a special therapeutic need of the patient (NCSBN, 2014). An example of boundary crossing is when a nurse accepts a small gift from a patient and then realizes that she should not have accepted the gift because it compromises the professional relationship between the patient and the nurse.
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An example of boundary violation is when the nurse discloses personal information such as I am really upset with my ex-husband because he will not help pay for my kids to go on a school trip. The trip is really expensive and I do not have the money to pay for the trip, it’s just killing me that my kids will have to miss this trip. The patient offers to pay for the trip and the nurse accepts the money and states let’s just keep this between