Catheters, Slurs, and Pickup Lines: Professional Intimacy in Hospital Nursing

Every day, hospital nurses must negotiate intimate trust and intimate conflict in an effort to provide quality health care. However, interactions between nurses and patients - which often require issues of privacy - are sometimes made more uncomfortable with inappropriate behaviour, as when a patient has a racist and/or sexist outburst. Not all nurses are prepared to handle such intimacy, but they can all learn how to be caring. In Catheters, Slurs, and Pickup Lines, Lisa Ruchti carefully examines this fragile relationship between intimacy and professional care, and provides a language for patients, nurses, and administrators to teach, conduct, and advocate for knowledgeable and skilled intimate care in a hospital setting. She also recommends best training practices and practical and effective policy changes to handle conflicts. Ruchti shows that caring is not just a personality characteristic but is work that is structured by intersections of race, gender, and nationality. Lisa C. Ruchti is Assistant Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching focus on the sociology of gender, intersectionality, and transnational feminist theories.