Student nurse/patient relationship boundaries

[maria00]

Hello all wonderful nurses! I'm Maria, and I'm a first year nursing student. I'm 38 (never too late for nursing school I guess haha). Well, I found this site some time back and have got lots of great information over the months. I find myself in a small unsure situation at the time, and I decided to go ahead and create an account and ask for advice.

I will provide minimum detail and try to keep things short and simple. Last week, I had a young patient very close to my age (41). It was surprising since I had been used to dealing with mainly older adults. He was admitted for a serious illness and due for surgery in a few days..days in which I wouldn't be in clinical and probably wouldn't have him assigned to me again anyways. But we connected well on both a personal and professional level, and I became a comfort for him throughout my shift since he was extremely fearful of his.upcoming surgery. When it was time for me to end my shift, I made sure he was comfortable and eased his worries about surgery. He seemed like he wanted to keep in touch with me and asked for my Facebook. I'm against Facebook, so I told him I was sorry I didn't have one. So I decided to give him my email so he could email me after surgery to let me know how he is doing. I didn't think nothing if this and keep in mind I'm a first year student. We've never had lectures on how to handle situations like these. I know I should have asked my professor, but she was called to a meeting. Now I'm scared sick that I might have done the wrong thing, but I didn't want to hurt my patient's feelings and I really would like to know if all pulls through. So I hope someone can message soon with advice. Did I mess up? How should I have handled this? What should I do? I hope someone can ease my mind. Thanks.

[jadelpn, LPN, EMT-B]

YIKES! I have not read anyone else's responses--and will, however, this made me sit up and take notice.

To the OP--Personal and professional boundries should never, ever cross. Ever. You should never share your personal information with a patient. Ever.

Not only can you can get in heaps of trouble for this with a facility, if is not easy to be an effective nurse if you are emotionally caught up in feelings of a different and personal nature with a patient.

Patients are in one of the most vulnerable times in their lives when they are ill and hospitalized. Do not ever distort that into some sort of flirtatious and/or inappropriate level. A nurse and a patient can connect on a number of levels--a shared goal of health, a shared goal of function, a shared goal of effective care and teaching. Otherwise, you are crossing a line that should never be crossed.

So what I think that you could be mindful of going forward is that you should never be in a place where you are connecting on a personal level with a patient. Professional, I am following you, personal, no way. You can think about how to be an empathetic nurse without getting personally caught up.

It is not the end of the world, and you are learning. I am not sure that I would be all announcing this to my clinical instructor, unless you wrote down your email, and there's proof of same. Some may call that unethical, however, I am not sure what your school's policy is on boundry issues. But I would have a discussion about personal boundries, and what is and is not acceptable. About strategies to repectfully bring the communication back to a professional level if it seems to have gone off the path.

[DoeRN]

I think you should tell your instructor. You don't want her to find out from someone else.

You can be concerned about a patient's outcome but there's also a way to do it and remain detached. A simple good luck with your surgery tomorrow have a good night and keep it moving on your part. I usually don't talk about myself and if patients ask me personal questions I usually A. Don't answer (politely though like I'll say well let's learn more about why you are admitted to the hospital and discuss your plan of care for the day) and redirect the conversation back. B. If it's something I feel comfortable sharing like where I'm from I'll tell them and redirect the conversation back to them. This takes practice but again we have to set boundaries with patients and remain professional.

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