Touch- to bring a bodily part into contact with especially so as to perceive through the tactile sense: handle or feel gently usually with the intent to understand or appreciate. (Merriam-webster.com, 2019)

Note: Consent is an important foundation when using touch in clinical practice. Having consent and the patient being informed of a procedure before and during practice is imperative to building a strong practitioner-patient relationship.

We all experience touch throughout our lives, it is something vital to our everyday wellbeing mentally, physically, emotionally and socially. This contact doesn’t just come in the form of physical touch - it can be anything from a reassuring pat on the arm, a hug or even a meaningful chat with a close friend. But how do we satisfy our needs for contact and touch when a majority of the relationships someone experiences are in a clinical setting? What happens when someone has a disability and their days are made up of physical therapy, appointments, tests and having carers and support workers assist with personal care?

Suddenly many feel themselves experiencing an extremely sterile and somewhat robotic connection with those around them. They have people there caring for them in the most intimate of settings but it feels as if they are just being put through the motions and their dignity is left shattered. It’s not hard to imagine what this can do to someone’s sense of dignity, trust, and emotional wellbeing. 

However, there is another way. One that can alter the course of someones working relationship between client/patient and healthcare professional. Surprisingly it doesn’t take much to make this meaningful alteration but can at the same time make a world of difference. 

Dr. Abraham Verghese is a professor at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. In 2011, he gave TED Talk in Edinburgh and perfectly summarised the importance of touch in a practitioner-patient relationship by stating that it is a physician’s role “to touch, comfort, diagnose and bring about treatment.” (Verghese, 2011) 

Dr. Verghese encouraged his fellow physicians to reconsider their idea of clinical touch in their practice stating: “When we shorten the physical exam, we’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent and at the heart of the physician-patient relationship.” 

Sometimes all it takes is having a laugh about the latest cat meme going around, talking about your pets and their personalities, or being excited to hear about what your client has been up to outside the “medical bubble”. Suddenly that sterile environment fades away and is replaced with one that is inviting and reassuring. The fear that often sits in the pit of a patient’s stomach dissolves, and they head into appointments looking forward to updating their team on what they’ve been up to and their newest achievement. A painful appointment with your physical therapist turns into having a laugh over something. What physically happens in the appointment or whatever therapy needs to be administered doesn’t necessarily change, but it can change the dynamic and the overall experience for the client.

It is important that the client's overall wellbeing is looked after. If clinical touch is the majority of contact that you experience in your life and you are often seen just as a patient rather than a whole person, it can eat away at you and have detrimental effects. If someone has experienced this sort of contact from a younger age, perhaps as a teenager or young adult, they can find clinical touch even more detrimental to the health and self-esteem when practiced without the patient’s overall wellbeing, dignity and comfort being considered. 

I think it is time to change how we think about each other and the sort of contact that we have not just in a clinical setting but in everyday life. Everybody needs reassurance, attention or help sometimes, but most of all the thing that we all need at the end of the day is to know that those who are there and present in our lives especially in those intimate moments are interested in more than our charts and medical background.

•   Merriam-webster.com. (2019). Definition of TOUCH. [online] Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/touch [Accessed 1 Oct. 2019].

•   Verghese, A. (2011). A Doctor’s Touch. [video] Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/abraham_verghese_a_doctor_s_touch?language=en [Accessed 2 Oct. 2019].

About the writer

Jess Cochran is a 29-year-old from Melbourne. Jess lives with physical and psychosocial disabilities as well as chronic illness. Jess is a writer, performing artist, actress, model, and disability advocate. 

She hopes that her continued involvement with advocacy, writing and the performing arts will help break down the barriers that performing artists with disabilities face when trying to access work, training and performance spaces.