Professional Boundaries

I am sure you have read the newspaper articles or heard the news reports related to Jennifer Hyatte, L.P.N. She is a Tennessee L.P.N. who helped her husband George Hyatte, a prisoner, escape from jail. He was serving a 35 year sentence for aggravated assault and aggravated robbery. A correctional officer was killed and allegedly shot by Mrs. Hyatte during the prison escape.

Mrs. Hyatte was terminated from her nursing position in the prison because of her relationship with the inmate. What happened here? ALL nurses, regardless of practice setting must recognize there are boundaries and limits in the professional nurse-client relationship. The nurse-client relationship is not a friendship; it is a professional relationship based on utilization of the nursing process. For additional information on professional boundaries see the National Council of State Boards of Nursing website at http://www.ncsbn.org.

What do you think?

Comments

[Katharina M. Friedly]

Professional boundaries are critically important in the ethical practice of nursing. The Ohio Board of Nursing's position as stated in the Momentum in a very timely issue indicates that all activity of the nurse in the work place is to be therapeutic in nature for all clients involved. Relational boundaries are to be maintained first to protect the public whom the nurse is hired to serve and, second, to protect the nurse form the legal nightmares and emotional consequences of violated boundaries.
The nurse in this case put herself and others at risk once she chose to become emotionally involved with the inmate. It would be important to establish whether the prison hired Mrs. Hyatte before or after she married George Hyatte and what the prison's policies are re: the hiring of and/or the continued employment of persons who are related by blood or by law to an inmate. If the prison hired her, or continued her employment, knowing her marital relationship to the inmate, both she and they have shared in the responsibility of putting her in a position in which she could not maintain professional boundaries due to both a conflict of interests and to her emotional involvement and commitment to George Hyatte.