•Explore the emotional competencies that promote ethical clinical boundaries and practices.•Implement techniques for providing attunement, presence, and values of neutral care that improve outcomes.•Develop a plan of care to support greater resilience in clinical practice to decrease the risks of boundary violations, compassion fatigue, and team dysfunction. In clinical practice, we face ethical conundrums daily. We may be prepared to honor financial and physical limits in our relationships with patients and families, but ethical boundaries in the face of suffering are about far more than these surface areas. They require exquisite emotional health, intelligence, and resilience. If we come to our professional work personally empty of these things, we may look to work to fill us up to make us feel OK, which can lead us to overstep our role and scope and put us at risk for numerous boundary violations. When we are full with our own practices and connections to others and a solid sense of self, we can simply allow our work to be fulfilling. There is a subtle but significant difference between the two. This means practicing resilience and self-care is no longer a good idea we need to get around to someday but is, in fact, our greatest clinical competence. We can have the best clinical tools, mnemonics, and protocols but if we are not grounded and centered to wield those tools well, we will be ineffectual at least and dangerous at worst, and none of us got into caregiving to be dangerous. Maintaining such ethical and emotional competencies leads to clinical excellence as we are able to avoid the over-functioning that can contribute to compassion fatigue and team dysfunction, honor patient and family autonomy and dignity that empowers them and supports more values-neutral care, and be more present and attuned in ways that can improve satisfaction and outcomes. This presentation will provide information from the literature, practical insights that can be immediately implemented at bedside, and opportunities to practice techniques that can deepen our ability to be present with suffering in healing ways that are protective for both provider and recipient.