Provision 2
A nurse’s primary commitment is to the recipient(s) of nursing care, whether an individual, family, group, community, or population.
2.3 Professional Boundaries
The work of nursing is inherently personal. Nursing therapeutic relationships seek to navigate illness and injury to promote, protect and restore health, and/or to alleviate pain and suffering. Nurses develop professional boundaries to protect the patient and to mitigate power imbalances with recipients of care. Nurses examine their behaviors and actions to ensure they are functioning within their professional role. Nurses pay careful attention when they are at risk of deviating from the therapeutic relationship by becoming over- or under-involved with recipients of nursing care or others involved in their care. Nurses identify behaviors and actions that could compromise the professional boundaries in relationships with colleagues, patients, or patients’ identified important persons or alternate decision-makers. Nurses compassionately enforce and restore professional boundaries when they are in jeopardy or become compromised and escalate when additional support is needed. Nurses should be aware of the policy in the practice setting and use approved channels of communication with and about recipients of care. Tokens of gratitude may be offered by patients, and some may reflect a particular cultural practice. Nurses should be mindful of this and follow institutional policy.