The Calming Effect Of A Touch
So, Megen wrote this post recently about “Therapeutic Presence.” The following passage really caught my attention:
Question is: are there more things in nursing, Horatio, than science can explain? Can we touch patients and zap them with calmness or take away their pain? Can we, by our mindset during our provision of care, substantially affect our patients’ outcomes? Can any of this be taught? Can we do it on purpose? I don’t know. That situation has captured my attention, though, because the flip side must also be true—if I despise my patient, she can probably tell that too, regardless of how tightly I’m controlling my behavior.
Little backstory: A few weeks ago I had a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Basically, a very nice surgeon made a few incisions into my abdomen, inserted a camera and some wrenches or something, and took my gall bladder out. I had never had surgery before. Never been intubated. I have been on “the bed side” quite a few times, but never for surgery.
A week elapsed between the time we decided to do surgery and the time the surgery actually happened. It was a really hard week for me as I was very anxious about the whole thing. I’m not even sure what exactly it was that I was nervous about. I Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at code blog - tales of a nurse*
