18 OPINION
18 OPINION
20 MARCH 2026 ausdoc. com. au
Insight
Are we losing our touch?
Dr Louise Burns is an ACRRM GP registrar.
I think we grossly underestimate the power of touch.
DURING a resuscitation, would it be such a burden to have a designated team member whose role is simply to hold the patient’ s hand?
From personal experience, I know how invaluable therapeutic touch is at a time when the psychological status of the patient is the last thing on the medical team’ s mind.
Would it be bold to say that humanity is often pushed to the side as the patient becomes physiology, parameters and procedures?
I am blessed with the curse of idiopathic anaphylaxis.
In 2018, I ate a nut bar for breakfast. I then had the same nut bar the following morning, and my tongue started to swell. This was the start of a horrible relationship with adrenaline.
In the beginning, I was having fullblown anaphylaxis every two or three days— often on an adrenaline infusion, multiple helicopter trips to the closest tertiary hospital and several ICU stays.
Each reaction was as severe as the previous one, with nothing‘ mild’ in between.
You would think as a doctor you would be more prepared than the average Joe when it comes to living through a resuscitation. You’ re not.
The stethoscope runs for the hills the minute the trauma shears come out.
Clothes are cut off, cannulas are going in( sometimes in your feet) and there is a horrific feeling of struggling to breathe through airway oedema as you drift in and out of the verbal updates on your physiological state.
Of the 180 episodes I’ ve had, one in particular is vividly memorable. And not for the wrong reasons.
I had eaten some chocolate while on the ward following an anaphylactic reaction to chicken salt the previous day. The wave of nausea and dread came over me as my tongue started to fill out my
mouth. As the drowsiness set in, I could hear the resuscitation cart clanking down the hallway.
It was just another horrifically terrifying Tuesday, wondering, again, if this time would be the last time. Existential crises don’ t get any easier the more you have them.
However, this time, as the fear was building inside me, I felt a hand on my
arm. It wasn’ t putting in a needle or checking a pulse. It didn’ t have a clinical purpose. It was just there. I felt a sense of calmness as this hand grounded me. In what felt like consuming darkness, I had a sliver of light to hang on to.
I later learnt that the person was another doctor, a colleague and mentor. She did nothing else but hold my hand, and the comfort that brought is just indescribable.
I think we grossly underestimate the power of touch.
As clinicians, we are programmed to palpate. We examine. We press.
To touch stirs uneasiness in many, as though it crosses the boundaries of the doctor – patient relationship. It can lead the mind down the‘ almost as scary as
Therapeutic touch can be a powerful tool in meeting that very basic and instinctual human need for connection.
anaphylaxis’ path of litigious fear.
But touch is a very primal and deeply ingrained evolutionary behaviour. It has survived the Darwinian test of time and emerged as a genetic frontrunner in the fostering of community and connection.
Therapeutic touch requires a relationship of trust and consent and an intention to empathetically connect. It is informed and guided by emotional intelligence, and it is emotional intelligence that recognises when touch is appropriate and when it is not.
Therapeutic touch is a skill in the same sense that some of us are more proficient with a dermatoscope.
It is not a skill everyone has or knows how to use. Many don’ t feel comfortable using it. And like any other skill you don’ t feel comfortable or confident using, there is the increased risk of‘ getting it wrong’ and finding yourself chased by lawyers.
I find it sad that litigation is our first and foremost thought when we are faced with an almost evolutionary pull to provide a hand to hold for those who are suffering.
I think, in the right hands and the right context and with a pinch of emotional intelligence, therapeutic touch can be a powerful tool in meeting that very basic and instinctual human need for connection.
And when you’ re facing the heavy weight of your own mortality, you feel a little less alone when there’ s a hand on yours.
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