Psych CASC / OSCE · Professional — boundary violations and sexual misconduct
Hold the frame after a romantic invitation — CASC communication station
MRCPsych/FRANZCP-style CASC: maintain alliance while declining dual-relationship and romantic invitations, explain professional boundaries, explore erotic/idealising material, and safety-net without inventing legal sections.
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Station brief
Format. Communication station, approximately 7–10 minutes active time after reading. You are the psychiatry registrar in an outpatient clinic. [1]
Candidate instructions. Your patient is offering an expensive gift, expressing romantic love, and inviting you to dinner. Maintain rapport, thank them for the honesty of the disclosure, decline dual-relationship and romantic invitations clearly, explain professional boundaries in accessible language, explore the meaning of the offer, check for feelings of rejection, reaffirm ongoing care inside the frame, and agree a plan. Do not lecture, mock, flirt, or leave the patient abandoned. Do not invent statute numbers. [1][2][3]
References4ShowHide
- [1]Gutheil TG, Gabbard GO The concept of boundaries in clinical practice: theoretical and risk-management dimensions Am J Psychiatry, 1993.PMID 8422069
- [2]Pope KS, Keith-Spiegel P A practical approach to boundaries in psychotherapy: making decisions, bypassing blunders, and mending fences J Clin Psychol, 2008.PMID 18386835
- [3]Norris DM, Gutheil TG, Strasburger LH This couldn't happen to me: boundary problems and sexual misconduct in the psychotherapy relationship Psychiatr Serv, 2003.PMID 12663839
- [4]Bloch S, Kenn F, Smith G Revising the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists code of ethics Australas Psychiatry, 2018.PMID 30058364