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LPNs
Professional Responsibility and Accountability Series: Professional Boundaries
In 2025, the College of Licensed Practical Nurses of Alberta (CLPNA) will share information on topics related to professional responsibility and accountability. This month’s topic is professional boundaries.
LPNs have professional knowledge, skills, and understanding that clients rely on for their wellbeing. They use their client’s personal health information to help achieve better outcomes. They are often with their clients during vulnerable periods. All of this places LPNs in a position of power over their clients.
LPNs have a responsibility to maintain professional boundaries. Appropriate boundaries build trust and respect, keep the focus on health-related treatment goals, and ensure that health professionals do not take advantage of the power that they hold over clients.
Actions that don’t align with these boundaries, such as providing care outside of the care plan or seeking the client out when not at work, can compromise an LPN’s ability to provide safe, quality care and break the trust between the LPN and their client.
Example: Providing Services Outside of the Care Plan
An LPN is employed as a homecare nurse. They visit one of their clients to provide wound care on her foot.
The LPN notices that their client is having difficulties getting around. She is not able to keep her house clean, so the LPN helps by vacuuming and doing the dishes. They run a few errands for her and drive her to some appointments outside of work hours.
The LPN does not document or otherwise report any of these extra tasks to the rest of the client’s healthcare team, believing it is not relevant to client care.
By assisting the client outside of the assigned care, the LPN in this example is crossing professional boundaries. Changes in the client’s capabilities—for example, the ability to keep her house clean—need to be reported to the healthcare team. Proper notification helps the team get the client any other support that she might need and alerts them that her condition may have changed. In this case, the wound on the client’s foot may have impacted her ability to keep up with her day-to-day activities.
In this example, the LPN is also building a personal relationship with the client by helping her outside of work hours. This creates a scenario where the LPN could take advantage of the power that they hold over their client, for example by receiving gifts. Prioritizing a therapeutic nurse/client relationship will make sure that the LPN can focus on supporting the client in meeting health-related treatment goals.
More Resources
Professional Responsibility and Accountability (policy)
Standards of Practice on Boundary Violations
Want to Learn More?
Register for our upcoming webinar: Professional Responsibility and Accountability