This week I was put in an awkward situation with one of my patients. I have just started treating a 53 year old lady on my neurology outpatient placement. This particular lady has been a long term patient in outpatients due to several neurological events, and has been treated by a number of students. The same day as our initial session I came home and went on Facebook (as we all do!) to find that this patient had requested to add me as a friend. I also noticed that she was already friends with two other students who had treated her previous to me.
This put me in an awkward situation, I felt obliged to accept this patients request. I felt that if I didn’t she may become offended, especially as other students had accepted her as a friend, and this could affect future treatment. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the patient; in fact I think she is a remarkable lady who is extremely independent despite her deficits. I just felt uncomfortable, like I was doing something wrong or breaking a code of conduct.
After some thought, I came to the conclusion that I had done the right thing. In this particular situation there was nothing suspect, she was a 50-something old lady who wanted some friends (on looking at her Facebook page she only had 16 friends). Had I ignored the request it may have hurt her feelings, and with all the terrible things that had occurred in this ladies past that was the last thing I wanted to do. It did get me thinking though, had this been an 18 year old female, would this be acceptable? Probably not. When I was on practical at PMH, I was told that when treating an adolescent female that I should always have someone else present in the room. In the past female patients had been known to have “crushes” on their male therapists, and even made accusations against those therapists. Accepting them as a Facebook friend could easily be misconstrued by the patient, their parents, and even the physios’ employer. But then again, if it was an 18 year old male it would probably be ok…
I’m sure this situation has happened to many therapists. When I was on a previous prac, a young male patient had mentioned to me in conversation that he was Facebook friends with a female physio. At the time I remember thinking that this was inappropriate; in hindsight the female physio may have been put in same situation as me and did not want to offend. The only conclusion I can make on this is that there is no right or wrong, it depends on the circumstances, and it is up to the therapist to carefully consider these. It would be great to hear others thoughts on, or experiences with, this matter.
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2 comments:
Ryan
I must confess that I am not a Facebook user. I think we need to be careful with these types of requests. Our job is not necessarily to be a friend to our patients. Yes we do have empathy and create rapport, but I think we are most respected if we maintain a professional distance and provide objective assessment, treatment and advice.
I suspect many of us will confront awkward moments where a patient will try to extend the interaction beyond a health professional/ patient interaction. We can politely say words to the effect, "that we prefer to keep our private lives separate to our professional lives". We can't control the patient response to such a statement, however most will be understanding.
If you would like to continue a mutually beneficial interaction (rather than one of sympathy) I suggest that this commence at the cessation of treatment.
Regards
John
Yes, an awkward situation. I personally would have clicked the 'ignore' button, but this is because I am a person who does not like to wade through 'fuzzy grey areas'. I donot forsee a problem in this situation, and as you say every situation needs to be assessed individually - but where do you draw the line? Better to be safe and hurt one person's feelings than making a mess of something.
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