ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the limits or personal boundaries doctors impose on the overlap between their personal and home life and their work. It describes doctors’ perceptions of the boundaries they draw between work and personal life. Their degree of attachment or involvement with their patients is influenced by factors both in their patients and in themselves, including their life experience and their level of self-awareness. The boundary between home and work is brought clearly into focus by the doctor’s decision on where to live, in or out of the practice area. Increasing self-awareness, through personal experience, through relating to self, to family, to colleagues and to patients, is an integral part of the growth of the general practitioner from novice to experienced practitioner, and inevitably affects the ability to undertake listening work. Also integral to this growth is knowledge of self-limitation through developing understanding of both conscious competence and conscious incompetence in general practice work.
