Introduction
Psychologists have guidelines that determine their behavior and direct their actions. These guidelines must always be respected to ensure psychologists offer quality services to clients. Even though there are professional guidelines regarding this aspect, few service providers adhere to them, and this exposes this profession to criticism in the manner in which its members perform their duties.
Personal Frameworks and Boundaries
The human mind is capable of formulating policies and guidelines and, at the same time, developing excuses for not observing them. Constitutional laws, work policies, and religious guidelines have been abused by people, especially those held in high esteem by society (Corey 2011).
Psychologists must develop frameworks that will help them to manage boundaries between their services and clients without compromising their performance. This will enable them to distinguish their professions from issues of conflict of interest when doing their work (Fisher 2009). The following is a framework that will allow them to uphold high moral and professional ethics at their places of work.
First, they should develop a hierarchical framework that will ensure everybody is assigned roles that reflect their academic qualifications and experiences. This will ensure no one offers all services to a client. As a result, this will reduce the chances of secret relationships and private affairs in an organization. Workers should be assigned specific roles, and division of labor should take center stage in ensuring that a client does not remain confined to services offered by one person (Fisher 2009). This hierarchy should be respected, and all policies regarding it must be followed to ensure everybody participates in service delivery. This will ensure workers participate in offering their services to all clients without biases.
Secondly, there is a need to develop policies that will enhance transparency in service delivery to ensure that everybody is able to observe what is happening around them without asking about it. Even though some medical oaths demand that patient’s information should be kept as confidential as possible, and this is not restricted to sharing information between medical staff (Corey 2011). An example of this policy is one that will ensure all information regarding clients’ problems is recorded in a data system that is accessed by all members. All staff performing similar duties or in the same departments should have access to their database systems. This will ensure they are able to monitor how their colleagues offer their services.
Thirdly, there is a need to develop forums where workers can share their experiences without fear of victimization some emotional issues may be challenging to manage by individuals, but when this issue is given collective attention, it becomes easy to solve the underlying problems. Therefore, a psychologist should have opened forums to discuss the issues that may not necessarily be within their professional ethics but are nonetheless influential in their activities.
Moreover, managing healthy boundaries between psychologists and their clients can be achieved through the establishment of guiding and counseling services. Shockingly, most clients are to blame for the presence of unprofessional relations between them. However, this department will ensure that clients realize the importance of maintaining professionalism between them and their service providers (Corey 2011). It is easy to convince clients that psychologists are just like other professionals whose sole duty is to provide psychological guidance to them. This department will ensure that clients understand the regulations that bind this profession; therefore, they will avoid jeopardizing psychologist’s interest at work. It should be noted that those that will be assigned to work in this department must approach this issue without fear (Fisher 2009). This means they must be trained on how to guide and counsel clients regarding respecting professional codes of psychologists.
Also, psychologists should set good examples for their clients to enable them to follow suit. It is tough for a client to visit a psychologist, then star demanding or provoking them for intimate relationships. This means that the opposite is also exact since most psychologists are the ones that make the first moves (Fisher 2009). It is necessary to point out that, when a client visits a psychologist, the former looks like a stranger in a foreign land and will behave according to how the later is suggesting. Therefore, when psychologists portray impressions that they advocate for intimate relationships, this will, without any doubt, become the routine (Corey 2011). However, when they do their work as professionals and decline any advances from their clients, they will be upholding their professional ethics, and this will be a significant boundary in their relationships.
Conclusion
The above discussion implies that psychologists deserve the freedom to interact with people just like other members in other professions like nursing, teaching, and law. However, this does not give way to unprofessional behavior between them and their clients. It is necessary to state that any relationship beyond the psychologist-client situation should not be allowed to interfere with service delivery. This means all other intimate relations should be kept out of the office and be reserved for other unofficial events and time like weekends. However, there should be stringent measures to curb unprofessional relationships at work since people who cannot control their emotions may pose severe threats to service delivery.
References
Corey, G. (2011). Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions. California: Thomson Books.
Fisher, C. B. (2009). Decoding the Ethics Code: A Practical Guide for Psychologists. California: Sage Publications.