When you are a nurse, or some other kind of professional person; doctor, teacher, lawyer or whatever there are rules which you must keep to, there are professional boundaries. Part of the theoretical training of a nurse must include professional issues, things like making the needs of your patient paramount to your actions, like conducting yourself in a way that is appropriate for example not stealing from your patients or as it says in our code of conduct even borrowing from your patients. What’s more you must not accept gifts if it might be construed that you would offer preferential treatment.

But what about getting emotionally involved with a patient / student / client? How do you identify before it is too late, what is right and what is wrong in this regard? When I was a student and young and naive (approximately 19 years old) and also not bound by a code of conduct I went out with an ex patient. I had never been asked for my phone number by a patient before, and had never thought about offering it to anyone myself. But this patient had been essentially well (surgery to arm following motorcycle accident) and I had been left to cope with a very sick patient in his bay (who nearly bled to death) at night, which had led to my sitting on his bed afterwards chatting that and subsequent nights. Afterwards it transpired that he had asked out half the nurses and physios on the ward and had been out with several. I only went out with him once, decided he was not for me, avoided his calls for a while and off he went.

I was young, hadn’t yet learned professional boundaries, and I guess in the end no harm came of the situation. But I am not sure it is something I would go out of my way to repeat, in fact, I would consider myself very sad if such a thing happened now. So it is with sadness that I find that an experienced nurse has let herself get very close to a patient who is dying and who is currently residing at her majesty’s pleasure (if you don’t know what I mean you will need to google it). To the point that she believed no other nurse would be good enough to deal with the patient and to the extent that many senior members of staff became concerned that this person seemed unaware of appropriate boundaries. I do not know what the outcome will be, but here is a professional who should know better and now has her career on the line.

I have never been involved with this kind of work before, but it is a real eye opener and one I could not be doing without being an experienced nurse myself. As far as I can see I am still using my nursing skills daily and I will challenge anyone who says otherwise.