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Originally posted by kewlnurseLets say you have a patient on the floor who had elective surgery, non life threatening. And lets say the pt had an attractive grandaughter that you struck up a conversation with, would it be unethical to ask said attractive grandaughter out for cocktails?
Before you engage in this activity you need to check out your nurse practice act in full. In my state, VA, this type of activity is not only considered unethical, but can lead to loss of licensure. Other states have similar restrictions. The consideration is fidelity to the nurse/patient relationship.
regards
chas
Feistynurse,
I enjoyed your article on boundaries. When I did CM on tech dependent kids, boundaries was one of the greatest problems we faced and like the article said, no one went into it with the intent to breach boundaries. We facilitated the placement of nurses from nursing agencies that provided in home attendant care to kids. There were TONS of opps for boundary violations (most of which were not sexual) but just as treacherous. We regularly lost nurses who, after having their boundaries breached were left with little else to do other than move on to other cases or other employment. Problems we had included: nurses doing farm chores for one family instead of caring for the child ("doing a favor" got way out of hand); parents directly scheduling with the nurse instead of going through the agency; loaning money and giving gifts to families; caregivers who became possessive of the child and resented not being the primary decision maker; caregivers who disclosed personal information about themselves to the family and then lived to regret it; families who wanted to know "personal information" about nurses--marital status, whether they smoked, religion--as a condition of having them take the case and on and on.
We concluded that many of these nurses just didn't know enough about boundaries, but I appreciated your article saying that home health is especially a difficult area to defend your boundaries. This was obviously a co-factor.
Kewl, he who hesitates is lost...
I am going to support Charles, position and say at least check with your state Board of Nursing and case law. How a regulation is interpreted depends not only on the actions against nurses by the Board of Nursing but also other forms of case law including criminal and tort.
I know of boundary cases that were never pursued by the BON after the DA got a conviction. One include stalking, another was action against the nurse's homeowners policy.
kewlnurse
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Lets say you have a patient on the floor who had elective surgery, non life threatening. And lets say the pt had an attractive grandaughter that you struck up a conversation with, would it be unethical to ask said attractive grandaughter out for cocktails?