I’m a stroke survivor in my mid-60s. A younger nurse and I almost slept together. Do we have a future?
This online headline for Lisi Tesher’s column last week was pretty "grabby" as we say in the journalism business when a headline, photo or article immediately gets our attention.
Tesher writes a syndicated relationship advice column for the Star. She or her mom, Ellie Tesher, a former Toronto Star senior editor and long-time writer for our paper — both freelancers — appear in the Star about six days a week.
They provide personal advice to readers on issues like marriage tensions, breakups and divorce, family problems, sex, etiquette, workplace interactions and many other topics.
The purpose of lifestyle columns is to give readers insights into how to manage their own problems.
It’s part of the “agony aunt” tradition, as it’s called in the U.K., where newspapers and magazines take questions from readers who need assistance with issues impacting their everyday lives.
It’s akin to having an older, wiser, next-door neighbour, grandma, teacher or friend that you go to, to bounce personal problems off. Syndicated columnists Dear Abby (continued today by her daughter Jeanne) and Ann Landers became household names in the U.S. and Canada for their advice columns.
Lisi and Ellie have a wide following as well.
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In addition to being informative, advice columns are also intended to amuse, titillate, entertain us and provide a form of light reading — a switch from the serious news of the day.
But Lisi’s column about the stroke survivor and the younger nurse also provides a valuable lesson on being aware of ethical, legal and policy considerations when dispensing advice.
To quickly summarize, the letter writer, a single, divorced, double stroke victim in his mid-60s, said he connected with one of the nurses in hospital while rehabbing from his strokes.
In the facility they became instant friends, shared their deepest secrets and “told each other our fears and what makes us happy,” the writer told Lisi.
On the day of his discharge from rehab the nurse came into his room “crying hysterically” about a fight with her fiancé over her not wanting sex before heading to work. Later as the patient was being wheeled out of hospital, his nurse friend told another nurse that: “I was her patient and said there was no way anybody else would wheel me out for the last time and (she) started crying again,” the letter writer said.
Jumping ahead in the letter, the nurse ended up taking a room in the stroke victim’s townhouse. One evening one thing led to another and playful touching escalated to “just short of having sex,” the man said in his letter.
“There’s only one major issue: I’m almost 20 years older than she is. What do you think?” the man asked in his letter.
Tesher’s reply included this advice: “Yes, 20 years is a large age gap, but you’re both mature adults. Be conscious of your life-stage differences and enjoy each other’s company.”
But in numerous online comments and some letters to my office, readers complained that age aside, the man’s relationship with the nurse was professionally inappropriate and breached clear rules governing interactions between nurses and their patients.
“The columnist's attitude seemed to be, have fun. There was a lot of inappropriate behaviour on the part of the nurse, including comments while he was a patient and then sexual behaviour afterwards. The columnist should have mentioned that most jurisdictions have restrictions regarding relationships with former patients — for good reason,” one Star reader, Linda said to me in an email.
Linda went on to say that the College of Nurses of Ontario has a code of conduct that explicitly states a person is still considered a “patient” for one year after the therapeutic nurse-patient relationship is over. This means a nurse should not be involved in any form of sexual relations with that individual during the one-year time frame, post-care.
The College confirmed this to the Star.
Tesher's letter writer didn’t mention a time frame for the sexual encounter, but it’s clear the point about the inappropriate nature of the relationship was missed by Tesher.
Working with my office, Tesher reworked part of the passage in the online version of her column to get at the point that the nurse’s supervisors would consider the relationship unethical and that there are rules and boundaries that must remain intact — even if the woman wasn't the patient’s direct nurse — for the duration of one-year, post-discharge.
“I take full responsibility for not recognizing there was an issue I didn’t pay attention to,” Tesher told me during a recent sit-down chat with me about the advice she gave here. She told me she was focused on the reader's question at hand — which was the age difference.
Tesher, who isn’t a trained therapist or social worker, says she’ll be mindful of issues like this in the future, especially in the context of advice that may wade into the health care arena.
She told me she has a large pool of social workers, child care experts, doctors, dentists, lawyers, family mediators and marriage counsellors that she taps into for help when it comes to giving advice to her readers.
“This column didn’t trigger me to do that, but now obviously going forward it will,” Tesher told me.
Her editor at the Star, Laura deCarufel, editor of the Star’s life, culture and entertainment sections and the Kit, told me Lisi and her mom are beloved voices with Star readers.
Lisi’s advice to the stroke victim “was an instance where we didn't adequately consider the larger context and implications of the response. I regret that, but it's a good reminder to ensure that sensitivity is in the foreground for future columns,” deCarufel added.
As public editor I’d say that a good lesson was learned here. Advice columnists must carefully consider whether there are any rules or ethical considerations that impact the guidance they give to their readers.
