LISA A. BECK: Hi. I'm Lisa Beck, one of the course directors of the Mayo Clinic Neurorehabilitation Summit, 2014. I'm excited to introduce Dr. Rita Hamilton, DO, from Baylor University in Dallas, Texas. She is joining us in discussing two very important topics as rehab professionals that we need to be aware of. One is identifying personal boundaries with our patient population, and also discussing end-of-life issues. I welcome Rita's conversations within our group, and I thank her for joining us.

RITA G. HAMILTON: The first topic that I discussed was on someone who had sustained a spinal cord injury, a high level C2, and the steps we took to withdraw care from our patient, and how we had the whole team involved. And it was a case presentation looking at our patient specifically, and then as a whole-- how a team may approach someone when they're faced with making decisions after a high cervical injury.

And the second topic I discussed was looking at boundaries when we care for our patients. Us as rehab physicians, when our patients are admitted to our unit, we keep them, a lot of times, for extended periods of time. And you can't help but become close to some of these men and women that we treat in our unit.

And the talk is all to make all of us as health care providers step back and think, how do we really treat our patients? And what are some of the boundaries we need to establish, especially in the day and age of texting and Facebook, and these type of things? How do we interject ourself into their lives and still stay on a professional basis and not cross the line to a personal basis? And the talk is more just informational, to have the group think about their boundaries with their patient population.