Locating the lived body in client–nurse interactions: Embodiment, intersubjectivity and intercorporeality

Abstract

The practice of nursing involves ongoing interactions between nurses' and clients' lived bodies. Despite this, several scholars have suggested that the "lived body" (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) has not been given its due place in nursing practice, education or research (Draper, J Adv Nurs, 70, 2014, 2235). With the advent of electronic health records and increased use of technology, face-to-face assessment and embodied understanding of clients' lived bodies may be on the decline. Furthermore, staffing levels may not afford the time nurses need to be as "present" with their clients in embodied ways. The failure to attend to the lived body may contribute to missed opportunities for care and decreased quality of life for both clients and healthcare practitioners. In this paper, we undertake an analysis of selected aspects of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The aim is to advance understanding of the affordances this work may offer to enhancing client-nurse interactions within the practice of nursing. Merleau-Ponty's notions of embodiment, intersubjectivity and intercorporeality as articulated in his seminal texts The Phenomenology of Perception (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012) and The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968) are examined. These three constructs are discussed as they relate to the lived body in client-nurse interactions in nursing practice and education. Finally, implications of how attention to "the lived body" could shape interactions and have the potential to foster increased quality of life of clients and nurses are considered.

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