RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 In good hands: the phenomenological significance of human touch for nursing practices
JF Medical Humanities
JO J Med Humanit
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 230
OP 237
DO 10.1136/medhum-2021-012220
VO 48
IS 2
A1 Lemermeyer, Gillian
YR 2022
UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/48/2/230.abstract
AB Prevailing understandings of the nurse’s touch tend to be focused on its consoling, instrumental and communicative utility. What seems to be missing is an exploration of the ethical and existential significance of the nurse’s touch. As an aspect of nearly every human experience, touch has a depth and breadth of meanings that are hard to compass. We experience the world through our bodies, feeling our way through our lives. In the nurse’s world, touching contact with the person in care is often considered to be a fundamental gesture, inherent to nursing practices. Still, touch is often hidden, subsumed by the tasks of nursing themselves. In order to explore the meaningfulness of the nurse’s touch, I start with considering the sense of touch itself, exploring possibilities of the nurse’s touch. The experience of the nurse’s touch is investigated further through phenomenological reflection on descriptive accounts of the nurse’s touch from poetry, fictional prose, neonatal nurse interviews, as well as scholarly and personal accounts. These examples show insights into the nurse’s touch as a site for an ethical encounter.Data sharing not applicable as no data sets were generated and/or analysed for this study. The data for this research are interview transcripts and other textual data drawn from published accounts.