Harvard review of psychiatry
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Harv Rev Psychiatry · Jan 1994
Roles, quandaries, and remedies: teaching professional boundaries to medical students.
This article conceptualizes a predictable set of tensions that medical students experience in their new roles with patients on clinical clerkships: empathy versus over-identification, objectivity versus avoidance, collaboration versus coercion, and self-confidence versus "special-ness." These tensions are framed in a developmental context for students and are used to highlight potential boundary difficulties. The role of supervision in teaching students and other beginning trainees about possible boundary issues is discussed.