On a recent orthopaedic placement of mine I treated one woman who had undergone a total knee replacement. She was a lovely lady and would often tell me stories during treatment sessions of her dancing, or dinner parties, or her cooking (which often made it difficult for me to excuse myself to treat the other patients on my list!).
However after a while she was quite insistent that I should come to one of her dinner parties and that she would cook for me. Infact when I tried to say 'no' in any way she would go on to explain how she always had 'young' people at her dinner parties and how she would show me all her gowns etc etc... would ask for my telephone number or address repeatedly and it was terribly awkward to try and explain how I couldn't give out that information. Normally I tried to simply change the subject or leave quickly following the end of the session to avoid getting into that conversation. Upon informing my supervisor he was adamant that I do not give out personal information and would often call me away after treating her so that I could avoid having to explain (for the 10th time) why I couldnt go to dinner with her.
You probably have similar stories of patients who want to thank you but fail to understand that it is unethical for us to see them on a personal level. One of my classmates had a patient call up everyone with her lastname in the phonebook, asking for her or her mother so should could take them to a restaraunt. Luckily her number is private and not in the whitepages. I think it is tempting at times to take a gift or if we get on so well with our patients to want to get to know them on a more personal level, after all they are thanking us for our services and usually are lovely people. In future I realise that it is not always neccessary to delve so much into discussion of the personal life of my patients and that depending on their attitude sometimes a more strict and proffessional demeanor is required to avoid situations such as these. furthermore it reinforced to me that it IS definately unethical to accept a patients offer of dinner etc, and legally could be a downfall for us.
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3 comments:
Some of these types of situations make you as a therapist feel very uncomfortable . It is often a reflection of the social isolation that some of our patients , particularly older ones, may live in. Likewise hostility in a patient may indicate underlying fear or a cry for help.
it is sometimes scary how fast something that i would consider friendly chatting turns into something very akward and inappropraite. I think informing other members of staff about this and asking for help is the best thing to do. My supervisor wanted a nurse to be in the room while i was treating to make sure the patient refrained from the inappropriate behaviour.
one of my supervisors told me that she once accepted a small gift from a patient when she first started out as a physio as she felt rude not accepting, and the patient was also female so she didn't see the harm. next there came other gifts including an expensive cd that she had once mentioned she liked. she kept refusing these gifts, but then when the patient was discharged she would wait outside the hospital for my supervisor to come out!
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