Professional Boundaries

This webinar will introduce participants to the nuances and complexities of professional boundaries. Thought you knew all about professional boundaries? Let your comfort zone be pushed in this webinar. Professional boundaries are about safety, the safety of the professional and safety of the patient. Few organisations however offer education or training that dives deep into the importance of boundaries to protect vulnerabilities in professionals that could lead to boundary transgressions.

CPD HOURS: 1
Registration Year 2024 - 2025

Course Content

This webinar will introduce participants to the nuances and complexities of professional boundaries. Thought you knew all about professional boundaries? Let your comfort zone be pushed in this webinar.

Professional boundaries are about safety, the safety of the professional and safety of the patient. Few organisations however offer education or training that dives deep into the importance of boundaries to protect vulnerabilities in professionals that could lead to boundary transgressions.

Imagine that you have to walk across a professional river that symbolises the relationship you have with a patient or patients. Consider the stepping stones that would be important to be in place to ensure your journey is safe.

This webinar will present you with the five foundation stones (stepping stones) of professional boundaries. They include definitions, boundary framework, red flags, reasons for transgressions and strategies to establish and maintain boundaries.

Some questions that will be posed and answered during this webinar include:

• When do acts of kindness become boundary violations?
• What are the multiple levels of power-vulnerability that can exist in the relationship between a professional and a client?
• When is self-disclosure harmful to both professional and client?
• What is the relationship between boundaries and burnout, vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue?
• What do I do to get over my reluctance and fear of setting limits with others?

Once you have integrated the boundary foundation stones into your practice you will appreciate that you can go to work and do a good day’s work doing the job you are paid to do. There is a difference between doing the job you are paid to do and doing the job you want to do. When the ideal of what an individual believes their work to be is challenged by the realities of what they can do, boundary transgressions occur.

There are multiple reasons for boundary transgressions and this webinar will begin a conversation on some of the most prominent ones that the presenter has identified in the work she has done with hundreds of professionals who have transgressed professional boundaries.

The focus of this webinar is the relationship between professionals and clients, however all discussions on boundaries require acknowledgment that collegial boundary transgressions occur and may lead to professionals being reported to their regulatory and professional bodies. Why risk a transgression when there are secure foundation stones that you can integrate into your practice?

Learning Outcomes

In this session you will:

  • Discuss the definitions of professional boundaries
  • Understanding the importance of the professional boundary framework to assist guide professional relationships
  • Identify vulnerabilities in professionals that lead to boundary transgressions
  • Identify strategies that can be integrated into practice to establish and maintain professional boundaries

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 Wendy McIntosh

RGN, RMHN, Grad. Dip MH, MN, Cert IV Workplace Assessment & Training, Group Leadership Cert, MRCNA, MANZCMHN, AANZPA
Wendy has over 30 years as a health professional (clinical, education and research), twenty-five of those years in mental health. Areas of specific interest and passion for Wendy include professional supervision, professional boundaries, professional identity, links between childhood trauma and mental illness and workplace bullying.