Yesterday (Friday), in my hospital pastoral care placement, a patient I have spent some time with on the ward where I'm working, was transferred to Intensive Care Unit, as things were not looking good for her.
Just before 8am, I received a call from ICU saying that this family was in need of pastoral care (the call came to me because I was the overnight on-call pastoral carer), but as the day duty person was likely to already be at the hospital by that time and it would have taken me half an hour to get there, I suggested they contact our department and speak to her.
Later in the morning, after I had seen the referred patients on the ward I was assigned to, I went up to ICU, to see how things were going, and whether the day duty person might need a break, as she had been with the family for a couple of hours by this time.
Because I already had a pastoral relationship with the patient and her mother, one of the senior pastoral care staff suggested that I should travel with this family for the rest of the day and be their main point of pastoral care, and so I spent most of the day with the family and friends of this patient (about 4 hours in total).
As I left them at the end of the day, I told them that I would be going home soon, and encouraged them to have the pastoral carer on duty paged if they needed someone to talk to, or to be with them during the evening, or through the weekend.
As I went home, I had trouble getting this patient and her family out of my mind. Today (Saturday) I felt keen to know how things were going for them, and was sorely tempted to ring the hospital to speak to the ICU nurse to find out what was happening. I managed to resist this temptation, because I am not on duty, and there is someone else who is, and if there are any needs today, this person is the appropriate one to look after them.
So I am feeling slightly squished between the rock of genuinely caring about what happens for these folk (and also wanting to be involved in their pastoral care), and the hard place of professional boundaries, that providing care for them was my responsibility till 4pm yesterday, but since then has been the responsibility of other people on duty overnight and the weekend, (so I shouldn't butt in).
This is certainly an issue that raises lots of emotions for me, and confused thoughts, so I think I need to write it all down in more detail for my own benefit, and then take the issue to my next supervision session.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
It is always hard, and something I failed at miserably when I was at Janet Clarke Hall. There I definitely crossed professional boundaries, but out of that I got some of my dearest friends, as the students I was pastoring are now still big parts of my life years after I and they left JCH. I'll marry two of them next year; I still act as mentor and counsellor to some when they need me; and others are just my friends. I just can't regret my stepping over boundaries in that case.
I've got better since then. It was really hard leaving Brunswick "cold" after my placement there, but I managed it. And it was actually helpful at the hospital to know that I wasn't being horrible and uncaring when I told people that I couldn't see them outside the hospital or after they'd left, that that wasn't my role.
Anyway, good luck with it all.
Post a Comment