Pathic Inquiry

1
Pathic Inquiry van Manen

• Pathic Touch IS Personal Touch supportive,
  caring, comforting, healing, therapeutic these
  justify the body through touch. Distance is
  removed, the touched is invited to be one with
  their own body, to inhabit their own body
  Professional Touch
• Is NOT Private Touch which may be
  loving, erotic, intimate, familar, a caress
  Unprofessional Touch

2
Gnostic Inquiry Hand

• Finger Pads for detecting moisture, contour,
  consistency, mobility
• Fingertips suited to explore lesions
• Dorsal surface and ulnar edge of hand fingers
  to detect temperature
• Palmar surface (ball) to assess vibratory
  impulses
• Grasping Fingers information on position and
  consistency

3
Pathic Inquiry Hand

• This is a healing hand, a caring hand which does
  not only touch the physical body, it also touches
  the self, the whole embodied person the core
  meaning of the healing act of nursing care
• This hand, if trusted, has the power to reunite
  the client pathically with their body, making
  room for them to heal, strengthen, to become
  whole
• Is used in many nursing tasks from bathing, to
  dressings, to assessing vital signs

4
Gnostic Aspect

• Analyzes, anatomizes, dissects, makes diagnoses
  and prognoses that tend to separate clients from
  their bodies the knowing intellectual hand
• Is the Science of Nursing and Medicine
• Includes tasks that look for causal, symptomatic,
  developmental patterns, psychological, physical,
  genetic abnormalities, various tests,
  devices used to measure and quantify
  focuses on pathology but tends to
  fragment the body.

5
Pathic Aspect

• Lies at the Heart of Nursing
• Aims to console and comfort, to ease suffering,
  to be there in moments of need, to support
  healing in convalescence, and to assist clients
  to feel whole and making life liveable again
• Pathic refers to the general mood, sensibility,
  and felt sense of being in the world feeling
  the world in an emotive modality of being
• Touch is the primordial medium to overcome
  separation and relational distance

6
Pathic Meaning in Nursing

• Consists in reuniting the patient with his or her
  body, and thus make life liveable again in
  whatever way this has to be learned by the patient

7
Professional Touch

• Firm not light
• Confident
• Directed with Purpose, Goal, Intent
• Both Pathic and Gnostic
• Gnostic (Dia)gnostic Touch to know well
• The person being palpated feels the nurse's
  hand but also their own body the probing
  hand turns anatomical may draw them
  in xray eyes or gnostic eyes

8
Gnostic-Pathic Touch

• An expert nurse's hands are both at once as
  instrumental and as caring
• Is something deeply personal or itnersubjective
  in the pathic relaitonship person is seen as a
  whole not as a case, category, type, set of
  factors, etc.
• Honors the uniqueness of each client, despite
  thier diagnostic portrait
• Need to address and reflect on the
  experience of the client and their illness
  phenomenology

9
Ways of Knowing - Walker

• Speaks of the Unnaming just as van Manen did at
  the beginning of his article this changes our
  perceptions of the object in question
• Perceived Nature as Teacher, Guide, Being
• Learned about Self in the process
• Taught about Interconnectedness of All
• Experienced a Revealing by Being with Plants,
  Geographic Places, other Humans, Animals
• Stories, Dreams, Silences, Poetry from the Land

10
Terms

• Ontology What is the nature of Nursing?
• Epistemology What is the nature of Nursing
  knowledge?
• Legitimate Knowledge associated with Power,
  what is accepted as reliable, as expert, as
  worthy of attention, respect, adherence,
• Multiple Realities a phenomenological view
  each person has their own Personal Meaning of
  their world, and their own Personal Worldview