The following course will educate healthcare providers on the various boundary risks that could happen in a behavioral healthcare setting. In therapeutic settings, the doctor-patient relationship is based on the principles of beneficence, autonomy, nonmaleficence, and compassion as well as fiduciary partnership. Also, there are several elements that can contribute to boundary risks leading to nonsexual or sexual boundary crossings and breaches, including the ignorance of physicians, their exploitative character, emotional vulnerability, and moral weakness.
What You’ll Learn
- Introduction to the principles of the doctor-patient relationship
- Boundaries in behavioral health
- Definition of boundary
- Boundary issues
- Nonsexual boundary issues
- Sexual misconduct
- Treatment boundary guidelines
Details
Course length: 30 minutes; CEU: 0.5
Languages: American English
Key features: Audio narration, learning activity, and post-assessment.
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Physician’s Behavior
Physicians must act in a way that is consistent in every way with the norms of the community and culture in which they live. Doctors are also required to uphold the Hippocratic Oath. The Hippocratic Oath is a vow made by physicians in the past to perform medicine morally. Additionally, physicians must be competent or have the desire to be experts in their field; they must uphold moral principles and be able to maintain their position. They must be accountable and responsible within the general population. It’s important to keep people’s trust. The effectiveness of the preservation of the public confidence that physicians have will depend on the quality of their care and their capacity to advocate for people with physical and mental illnesses. The best interests of the patient should always be put first when a physician acts toward a patient. Thus, upholding boundaries helps in maintaining the relationship’s integrity and increasing the public’s trust in them.What are Boundaries?
A boundary can be thought of as the “edge” of acceptable professional behavior; when it is crossed, the therapist is going outside of or breaching the clinical position. Boundaries specify the normal, recognized psychological and social separation between professionals and patients. Additionally, legal precedent, societal morality, and ethical treatises all serve as the foundation for boundaries. It might be challenging to pinpoint exactly where these boundaries end and the connection begins.Boundary Issues
Furthermore, disruptions of the expected and recognized social, physical, and psychological boundaries that separate doctors from patients are referred to as boundary issues. A therapist and patient develop a therapeutic relationship only for therapeutic purposes. Anytime this interaction deviates from the treatment as its primary goal, it is referred to as a boundary violation and is no longer considered to be therapeutic. Boundary risks are potentially harmful to the patient and their treatment. For example, strong emotional attachments are likely to form in psychiatry since the therapy contact is prolonged and becomes more personal as many private things are discussed. This can result in the development of non-therapeutic behaviors. There are two types of boundary issues that can occur:- Boundary violation
- Boundary crossings
