Professional caregivers or counselors (yes, and their staff) should find dates elsewhere than on their patient rosters. The world is wide, and there are a lot of people in it. Let them visit bars/join clubs/find their high school sweethearts/flirt at the bus stop.

Thanks. Now I’m somebody.

As for the point about limiting options, you’re certainly right. Under these rules – which, as I note, are basically the rules that have been adopted as a professional code by the American Psychiatric Association and some other bodies – the caregiver who becomes attracted to a patient really does have almost no options.

You can’t approach them, you can’t allow your feelings to affect your treatment (or if they do you must refer the patient to another caregiver), you can’t end the treatment relationship because of your feelings, if you do end the treatment relationship you still can’t approach them, and even if you just happen to run into them in private life you must let at least two years pass before you can even hint at a non-professional relationship. What it comes down to is basically that your patients are entirely off-limits: you have no real options that would allow you to pursue a personal relationship once a treatment relationship has begun, and you are required to completely sequester your personal feelings while in the treatment relationship.

It’s a demanding code. Part of the justification is, as I note, that half-measures were tried and they failed. But part of it, also, is a perception that healthcare providers stand in an unique relationship to their patients, and are part of a field that rightly imposes severe demands upon its members. (There are other such fields: police work, the military, the clergy, the judiciary, to some extent law and politics, etc.) Maybe those demands are too severe. I tend to think not. But yes, the rule is that “booty call” should never appear on an itemized charge sheet for “professional services rendered”. That’s the deal you make when you enter the field.

Aside from whether the rules are too strict at all, there is the question of categories of caregivers for whom they may be applicable.

As I also note, ancillary non-professional technicians are not normally expected to accept all the demands and limitations of a professional career. Is the ban on relationships one that they should accept? Again, I am inclined to say “yes”, but it’s a valid question. Second, there is a long-recognized problem for professionals in small or isolated communities. The ordinary demands of medical confidentiality and non-mingling of personal and professional relationships are more difficult to meet there, because the doctor’s social acquaintances are likely to be their patients as well. The strain this imposes on romantic relationships is even greater. The professions have generally recognized that some leeway is required in these circumstances, but they affect relatively few providers.

Secondly, Volokh, like many libertarians, is fond of slippery slope arguments:

http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/slipperymag.pdf

Though I have to admit, this provision: “(n) Terminating a professional relationship for the purpose of dating or pursuing a romantic or sexual relationship;” seems to be limiting what I would consider to be the ethical option of a professional that finds themselves attracted to a patient.