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Diane Flood, RN, said she’d long heard about the
art and science of nursing, but “very quickly
I began to question what the art of nursing was. I didn’t
see anybody talking about that,” she said.
It would take Flood, 49, more than 15 years as a critical
care nurse and 10 more years providing massage outside
of nursing before she discovered the art.
Flood said she could handle the technical aspects of
critical care nursing, but all the while she was nagged
by a feeling that there must be more to it. Observation
provided at least anecdotal evidence of something beyond
textbook science.
“I really began to question patients about what
was happening with them before they got sick or before
they were in these traumatic accidents,” Flood
said. “And it became clear to me there was definitely
a connection.” She said patients might confide
that their spouse had just died and that their own desire
for life was flagging. “And they’d be dead
in two years. That’s the kind of pattern I began
to see over and over again.”
One question kept popping up for her: “How is
my presence going to make a difference?”
Without an answer, Flood left nursing for 10 years,
establishing her own massage business in Phoenix. Like
nursing, it was still the hands-on, caregiving work
she desired.
Then, after a move to Michigan and at the behest of
a friend, Flood resurrected her nursing career two years
ago with Hospice of Michigan, where she incorporates
much of what she learned from massage about the physical
and emotional power of touch into her work.
Hospice is an ironic niche for Flood, who also said
that she left critical care, including a position in
a New York teaching hospital, because “I wanted
to be working with people who were healthier, rather
than dealing with sick and dying people constantly.”
In her Ann Arbor hospice practice, “I use more
of what I call healing touch or therapeutic touch with
my patients,” she said. “The way I use touch
is a way of being able to get past all the outward stuff
and connect with who that person really is. To connect
with their essence, their spirit, their soul.
“When I hug somebody, they know they’re
being hugged. And it’s not because of the strength
of the hug. It’s because I really, really connect
with their heart.”
The result of touch, of relating to patients’
energy, commonly is comfort—both emotional and
physical. In hospitals, Flood said, that can translate
into reduced pain medications and better sleep.
In the case of a patient on her watch who required
less than half the pain medication given in the previous
shift, Flood said, “Something else [touch] provided
him with what he needed, which was pain relief; pain
not necessarily being just physical. We all yearn to
be connected, to be heard, to be understood.”
Flood said the feedback she receives from patients,
families, doctors and nurses is that she has the touch
to make patients feel safe.
Hospice patients know when family and others aren’t
comfortable talking about death and consequently they
keep things to themselves that they’d rather express,
she said. “That will frequently cause them more
physical pain because the body is going to hold that
energy.”
In talking with physicians and others, though, about
therapeutic touch and energy, Flood said it’s
important to speak the physicians’ language. “I’m
not going to say, ‘Oooh, I feel this energy around
his heart that tells me that he’s emotionally
blah, blah,’ ” Flood said. “The doctor
is going to think I’m from another planet.
“What I will say is, ‘This patient seems
to be experiencing a lot of anxiety around the issue
of blah, blah. It seems that when I really spend time
with him and allow him to speak and talk and cry and
ask his questions, then things seem to calm down.’
”
Flood said it’s gratifying to create emotional
safety so that it’s OK to ask patients what it’s
like knowing they have little time left, and what is
important to them in their end-of-life time. “What’s
exciting is being able to create a place where people
really begin to recognize what’s important to
them in their bit of time,” she said.
“When they start to discover what that is, it
can be provided. I’m taking notes to myself.”
Flood said she would encourage nurses to risk being
uncomfortable to make patients—terminally ill
or otherwise—feel safe.
“Be open and vulnerable enough to contact that
person as their essence, not just their physical form.
What I love about my work is that I’m willing
to go anywhere emotionally with a patient,” she
said.
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