Maintaining Professional Boundaries in a Facebook World

By Cynthia M. A. Geppert, MD, PhD | April 12, 2010

Like millions of Americans, I've joined Facebook. I really enjoy it because it conveniently lets me stay in touch with my friends.

I don't tell my patients that I have a Facebook profile, but many patients tell me about their Facebook activities during therapy. How should I respond if a patient to "friend" me? As a psychiatrist, I try to preserve my anonymity from patients. What's the best response to such a scenario without disrupting our therapeutic alliance. Can I still continue to enjoy social networking while still maintaining my professional boundaries?

This vignette is based on an essay published in Psychiatric Times called "Ethical Challenges faced by Psychiatrists in the Internet Age." It was written by psychiatry resident Gonzalo Perez-Garcia, who noted: "We are now faced with a wealth of tempting electronic venues to share our lives. The problem is that by putting personal information for friends on the internet, we also share our personal information with the world.

We'd like to thank Dr Perez-Garcia for raising these questions, and we invite other listeners to submit their ethical questions and dilemmas to Dr Geppert. The email address is www.ptedit.com.

Maintaining professional boundaries in the Facebook world
Maintaining professional boundaries in the Facebook world
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by kenneth tuzzi | May 20, 2010 2:22 PM EDT

Stay off facebook, also if you call a patient from your home make sure you block your phone number. If you don't you will start getting calls from clients at your home. Most people have caller ID, and the needy ones will save your home number and call.

by Jacob Vohs | May 20, 2010 12:06 PM EDT

If you use a first initial and last name only, have a profile picture of a pet, and set the appropriate privacy settings then being on Facebook is not public to clients at all and you can easily restrict your friend list and access to your information to your family and friends. I really don't see this as a problem if you take the time to do some homework about the privacy settings on Facebook. And what could possibly be the problem with telling clients that you have a policy to not have involvement with clients in settings like Facebook.

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Maintaining Professional Boundaries in a Facebook World

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