Aged Care Insite Issue 97 | October-November 2016 | Page 29

clinical focus [Examples like] holding a patient’s hand are now being displaced by technology, and I don’t think anything can [adequately] replace the value and therapeutic benefit of somebody just touching somebody – hand-to-hand contact. In what other ways is technological disruption having a direct effect on that physical contact? A common thing that’s happening in nursing now is when patients are having their pulse taken by a pulse oximeter. A device is put on the patient’s finger to monitor a pulse. In the old days, and I would hope that many nurses still do it, nurses hold the hand and touch the patient to monitor a pulse rate. That’s often not being done now. Nurses just put on a machine and take the pulse. Of course that monitors the rate, but it doesn’t monitor a whole lot of other things that are important about monitoring a pulse rate and, certainly, patients miss out on having a nurse just touch them and hold their hand while they’re doing their pulse. There are many effects. For example, there’s evidence around about how nurses are desensitised to the use of alarms in areas such as the ICU, because there are so many false alarms. Often when the alarms go off, nurses don’t even respond. There are many opportunities for nurses to touch a patient, and often students tell us they’ve got so many tasks to do they haven’t got time to sit down and talk with a patient and hold their hand. In what ways can technology exist side by side with a warm personal or tactile approach to patient care? What are some of the things nurses should keep in mind, other than just taking opportunities where they come? Technology is here to stay and that technology is absolutely wonderful. Great advances have been made with technology, but, particularly as nurse educators, we need to role model the sorts of behaviours we would expect our students and graduates to undertake when they’re out in the clinical area. We need to talk to them all the time about things like touch, about how important it is. Years ago, there was much evidence in the literature about the therapeutic effects of touch. Not so much now. People aren’t talking about it as much as they could be, and we need to raise awareness in our students about how important all of these things are. They need to maximise every opportunity they can, when they’re undertaking procedures with patients, to remember that holding someone’s hand or touching someone is often therapeutic. Of course, along with the obvious benefits of touch to patients in an emotional sense, there are studies now that show touch releases oxytocin, which is [often referred to as] the ‘feel-good’ hormone. Early studies show that therapeutic touch raises hemoglobin levels. So there are also those added benefits. ■ agedcareinsite.com.au 27