I suppose this can be a complex issue though mainly during the treatment phase. As a busy practitioner working in private practice I find that most of the opportunity to actually meet people is via meeting your patients. Sometimes long practitioner-client relationship develop and in fact in several instance I have become quite good friends with my clients. This has never been in the short term however unless I stopped treating them. But for those who I have invested several years in supporting it is not such a problem. We have always acknowledged that there is a professional element to this that must be respected. One should also remember that as a listener and a friendly face many people might be quite different with you as a clinician and could be rather different as this gets blurred.

Perhaps my last thought is in relation to the gender of a PT. So often many, many of the women I have worked with date their patients! Many, many even while still treating them. Of course no male patient ever complains after it all goes wrong to a registration board or a national association. Thus the women have a position of this to me. Many men have been punished with penalties that include removal of registration. Although we have one professional standard for this we have two very different standards in reality. I suppose various boards should consider this in relation to the punishment for having a relationship with a client while they are still coming to your service for treatment. After all I think many relationships come out of the typical working environment and I think it is backward to think that as PT's we are taking advantage of any position anymore than a boss and a colleague in a corporate environment or even a customer and sales person in a retail environment.

Let the Wikipedia reference-linkPandora's box be opened!