Friday, October 23, 2015

10:30 AM - 12:30 PM

L1B

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Details

This interactive presentation with small group discussions of various scenarios is presented by Dr Genevieve Yates for MDA National. The workshop content combines a medical indemnity insurer’s insight from helping Members, experiences of a rural GP and educator, and a literature review – including guidelines from the Medical Board of Australia and medical colleges. Doctors regularly make difficult decisions about whether or not to treat friends, family, colleagues, employees and the relatives of these people or themselves. Working in small, rural and remote communities makes it essentially impossible to entirely avoid having both personal and professional relationships with people. These ‘dual relationships’ often involve a level of professional judgement and this workshop facilitates collaboration with peers to strengthen skills in making these decisions. Requirements and guidelines regarding overlapping relationships are important to reflect on and be confident about – especially for rural practitioners but also for all doctors in all locations. These areas have the potential to challenge a doctor’s ability to primarily focus on patients’ wellbeing and can affect doctors’ judgement and objectivity which ultimately affects the doctor’s welfare. Dual relationships require thorough awareness, negotiation, and management of boundaries. This workshop is an opportunity to focus on this challenging ‘shades of grey’ area. Our aims is to help you: • Identify the challenges associated with treating individuals with whom a doctor has a personal relationship. • Describe communication strategies to set boundaries. • Check behaviour against a list of important ‘self-check’ questions. • Appropriately respond to inappropriate requests by explicitly explaining ethical and legal risks. • Make necessary updates to workplace policies.