Catheters, Slurs, and Pickup Lines

Professional Intimacy in Hospital Nursing

Lisa C. Ruchti

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781439907535, 9781439907528
• eBook ISBN: 9781439907542
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Nursing
• Index: Social Sciences

Every day, hospital nurses must negotiate intimate trust and intimate conflict in an effort to provide quality health care. However, interactions between nurses and patients—which often require issues of privacy—are sometimes made more uncomfortable with inappropriate behavior, as when a patient has a racist and/or sexist outburst. Not all nurses are prepared to handle such intimacy, but they can all learn how to "be caring."

In Catheters, Slurs, and Pickup Lines, Lisa Ruchti carefully examines this fragile relationship between intimacy and professional care, and provides a language for patients, nurses, and administrators to teach, conduct, and advocate for knowledgeable and skilled intimate care in a hospital setting. She also recommends best training practices and practical and effective policy changes to handle conflicts.

Ruchti shows that "caring" is not just a personality characteristic but is work that is structured by intersections of race, gender, and nationality.

 

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Fantasies and Realities in Nursing Care
• 1. Invisible Intimacy in Nursing
• 2. Social and Commercial Aspects of Intimate Care Work
• 3. Catheters, Communications, and Intimate Trust
• 4. Slurs, Pickup Lines, and Intimate Conflicts
• 5. Individual and Collective Intimate Strategies
• Conclusion: A Call for Collective Nursing Practices and Continued Research
• Appendix A: Why I Define My Research as Feminist
• Appendix B: Nurse Demographics
• Appendix C: Illustrations: Model of Professional Intimacy and Nursing School Recruitment
• Notes
• References
• Index