It is sometimes said that the body is invisible in nursing. The dominant western perspective that knowledge and theory are supreme has tended to push the body into the shadows. Ideas take preference to embodiment as a way of understanding human agency and culture (Rudge 1997). Even though the scientific body is very much the focus for nurses, the lived body, which is how patients experience their bodies, often takes back stage.
In mentoring, another meaning of bodies shows through. The patient's body becomes a site of teaching and learning. It is a teaching and learning space - for showing a student how to do eye drops, insert a catheter, take blood pressures, apply dresssings and bandages and so on. There is, therefore, commonly a patient as third party present to mentors and students in workplace teaching situations. Mentors also use their bodies as teaching tools, physically showing practice or guiding a student's hands.
Tuesday 7 December 2010
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