As a registered professional, it is your responsibility to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with service users, carers and colleagues.
This means ensuring that your relationship always remains professional.
Maintain appropriate boundaries
1.8 You must consider the potential impact that the position of power and trust you hold as a health and care professional may have on individuals when in social or personal settings.
1.9 You must take action to set and maintain appropriate professional boundaries with service users, carers and colleagues.
1.12 You must not abuse your position as a health and care practitioner to pursue personal, sexual, emotional or financial relationships with service users, carers or colleagues.
(Standards of conduct, performance and ethics)
Professional boundaries and service users
The relationship you have with your service users is built on trust, and this is essential for you to be able to provide them with the care that they need. You establish and maintain that trust by treating your service users with dignity and respect and involving them in decisions about their care.
There is always a power imbalance between you and your service users. When we are in need of care, we are vulnerable. As the professional, you hold the knowledge and resources that we need and that puts you in a position of power.
Crossing a professional boundary with a service user or their carer is a serious breach of that trust and an abuse of your position.
It is your responsibility to ensure that your relationship with service users and their carers remains professional. If the boundary is beginning to blur or has been crossed, you should end the professional relationship and refer the service user to another relevant health professional.
A boundary may be crossed by:
- Giving and receiving gifts
- Extending invitations to social events or making plans to meet socially
- Developing a friendship or personal relationship
- Borrowing or lending money
- Providing a service user with your personal contact information
- Connecting on social media
Professional boundaries and colleagues
Your colleagues include everyone that you work with and alongside. It includes students, learners and trainees, other professionals, support workers, clerical and administrative staff, and professional carers. It includes those people that you work with and alongside and who are within or outside of your organisation.
It is your responsibility to maintain professional boundaries with your colleagues.
Work with colleagues
2.8 You must treat your colleagues in a professional manner showing them respect and consideration.
(Standards of conduct, performance and ethics)
We all have a right to work in an environment that is safe, free of discrimination, bullying and harassment. Incivility and unprofessional or sexualised behaviours have a significant and harmful impact on individual colleagues and teams. These behaviours build unhealthy workplace cultures leading to poor service user outcomes.
What is sexual misconduct?
Sexual misconduct, harassment and behaviours of a sexual nature can be particularly harmful, causing serious psychological, emotional or physical harm, that can remain long after the abuse has happened.
Sexual misconduct is a term used to describe uninvited or unwelcome behaviours of a sexual nature. These behaviours can make you feel offended, embarrassed, harmed, humiliated or intimidated.
This includes harassment, grooming, violence and abuse and it can be physical, verbal or visual. It includes things that are done for the purposes of sexual pleasure or to pursue a sexual relationship.
Behaviours of a sexual nature
- Excessive or unwanted compliments about your appearance
- Propositions and sexual advances
- Sexual or sexist comments, jokes, innuendo and banter
- A person talking or sharing information about their own sex life
- Sending, sharing or displaying sexually explicit pictures, posters or photos
- Sending sexually explicit emails, text messages or posts on social media
- Unwelcome touching, particularly of intimate areas of the body or in sexual way
- Sexual gestures
- Making promises in return for sexual favours
- Intrusive questions about your private or sex life
These behaviours are sexual in nature if delivered in person, shared online or sent via email or text message.
A person of any gender can display these behaviours or be the recipient of them.
Sexual misconduct is always unacceptable and always harmful.
What is grooming
Grooming is when a person builds a relationship with you so that they can manipulate, coerce or encourage you to do things, or allow things to be done to you, that you might not otherwise agree to.
It is possible for adults and children of any gender to be groomed, or prepared for abuse, particularly when we are vulnerable or feeling vulnerable. Grooming can happen in person or online.
Often the person doing the grooming is in a position of power or control, for example they may be more senior than you are or be a professional with more knowledge and experience than you might have.
Speaking up and raising concerns
As a registered professional, you have responsibilities to challenge discrimination and unprofessional behaviours, and raise concerns when you witness a colleague bully, harass or intimated a service user, carer or colleague.
Report concerns
7.5 You must raise concerns regarding colleagues if you witness bullying, harassment or intimidation of a service user, carer or another colleague. This should be done following the relevant procedures within your practice or organisation and maintaining the safety of all involved.
(Standards of conduct, performance and ethics)
We recognise that raising concerns about colleagues can be very challenging, and provide additional information and resources to support you with raising concerns.
Support for you
If you have been or are being subjected to bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct, we encourage you to seek help and support.
There are many safe places that are here to support you.
