nursingforsocialjustice

I’m tired of all the talk of “professional boundaries” at work, like it’s something that only needs to happen when someone is too close to a patient or situation. What about when the boundary is way too far away, like so far they the clinician is like a robot? What about when the blurry boundary is with our life inside and outside of the workplace? I’m looking at colleagues who work 80+ hours a week. In some positions, in some professions we even celebrate it, the “you can call any time if you need something” or “what are you still doing in your office it’s 9:00 o’clock?” We marvel at the amount of overtime that colleagues pick up, and different jobs that they have. But we don’t tell them they have poor boundaries with their work and not-work life.

Love,

On the flip side someone the rhetoric of professional boundaries as a finite distance, as a standard practice of maintaining arms length from people, and less about it as a process that requires constant reflection and feedback to understand the reflexivity of it. In school, as nurses, it is almost approached like a cut and dry, but that’s not how it is in real life. Sometimes our friend, the people of the community that we live in are our patients. Sometimes we are the patient. Sometimes our friends and families and loved one are the patient. And, we have these strict boundaries that exist to protect the public, but where are the guidelines and boundaries that help us navigate relationships with our work colleagues? Those exist too, but it’s not as talked about.

It’s tough sometimes to navigate who’s who at work and the types of relationships that exist between colleagues. It tough sometimes to navigate realms of practice within workplaces they often have a mix of clinicians, non-clinicians, and boundary blurriness of roles along with changing roles based on operational need. And so, to make a long story short (too late) my point is, healthcare is complex and to talk about professional boundaries like they are simple is misleading and confusing. And, we need to talk about them rather than it only coming up when someone is in trouble for crossing them and using the outcome as a cautionary tale.

Michelle D.