Preventing Burn Out

Preventing Burn Out: 5 Tips for Establishing Boundaries with Patients

This post was contributed by Tara Miller, who writes about the online psychology degree. She welcomes your feedback at TaraMillerr00 at yahoo.com

When working with children it’s easy to establish a bond, a fact that becomes even more evident with children who have emotional problems and are in desperate need of reassurance, care and kind adult caretakers. In these situations, many professionals may find themselves going beyond professional boundaries and getting deeply and emotionally involved with patients. While this is not to say that these kind of connections should be avoided altogether, they can lead to professional burn out and the stress and emotional toll they can take can be quite costly. There are ways you can help avoid this kind of burnout, however, and establish some clear professional boundaries with your patients.

1. Be strong. Even when you do establish boundaries with your patients that limit your emotional and personal involvement in their lives, there will be times when you are tempted to overstep those boundaries. Unless you believe a life is in danger, be strong and stick to your guns, otherwise you’ll never be able to regain your distance from the situation and be an effective doctor to your patients.

2. Be kind. Just because you have boundaries with your patients doesn’t mean you cannot treat them kindly and genuinely care about their well-being. In fact, this is an essential part of your job. But keep in mind that your kindness does not have to mean developing a bond with a patient that can be painful to break or maintain.

3. Understand that you can only do so much. You cannot rescue every child that walks through your door. You can help them, guide them, and lead them to happier lives but you cannot save them from what has happened to them or what will happen. Learn to understand that you can only extend yourself so far and don’t blame yourself for the paths that your patients choose.

4. Know what you can handle. Everyone has their limits and if you know that taking on a certain patient would cross yours it may be better to leave their treatment to someone else. This is not to say that you are not qualified only that you may not be able to see the situation clearly, which is unfair to the patient who deserves to be heard and evaluated impartially.

5. Learn how to say no. In order to maintain your own sanity, you need to have parts of your life that are purely personal and where your professional life cannot follow. Learn to tell your patients no if they demand appointments or call you at ridiculous hours. While they need good care, so do you and you are less useful to everyone if you’re miserable, emotional and exhausted. Unless you believe there is a serious risk of suicide or violence, sometimes saying no is the best thing you can do.