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.