Losing touch

Abstract

The need for human touch is universal among critical care patients and is an important component of the nurse–patient relationship. However, multiple barriers to human touch exist in the critical care environment. With little research to guide practice, we argue for the importance of human touch in the provision of holistic nursing care.

Touch in times of COVID‐19: Touch hunger hurts

“…Due to the ease of transmission and severity of COVID‐19, the increased use of personal protective equipment (PPE) is a fact of life for health professionals during this pandemic. The use of PPE, while essential for patient and health professional safety, has been found to impede communication, situational awareness and decision‐making particularly in emergency situations (Benítez et al., 2020) and while gloves provide a (necessary) physical barrier between nurses and patients for safety, gloved touch is not the same as skin‐to‐skin touch and can create an emotional barrier (Nist et al., 2020).…”

Touch-Hunger: An Unexplored Consequence of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…12,13 This will have important implications for the medical profession, especially during a global pandemic, and will encourage a dialogue surrounding the limitations of using touch during interaction with patients, from the safety and social-distancing perspective. 14 In conclusion, an underrated and relatively unexplored consequence of the novel COVID-19 pandemic is the phenomenon of touch hunger, which has increasingly emerged among individuals and may be contributing to other more observable psychological and psychiatric manifestations of distress and illness. Like any other phenomenon or ailment, this issue cannot adequately be dealt with by medical professionals before it is fully acknowledged and further studied, which calls for an urgent yet comprehensive evaluation of this experience and its impacts.…”

“… 12 , 13 This will have important implications for the medical profession, especially during a global pandemic, and will encourage a dialogue surrounding the limitations of using touch during interaction with patients, from the safety and social-distancing perspective. 14 …”

Caring touch in intensive care nursing: a qualitative study

“…Dealing with critically ill patients may induce both positive and negative emotions among ICU nurses, which may become challenging over time (Magro-Morillo et al, 2020 ). The multi-layer protective clothing during the COVID-19 pandemic prevents caring skin-to-skin touch (Nist et al, 2020 ). However, the ICU patient’s need for a caring touch is essential for the nurse-patient relationship.…”