The sexual embodiment of the cancer patientThis paper draws upon data from my doctoral studies and uses poststructuralism as a methodology to provide a way of seeing and understanding cancer patients’ complex experience of their bodies. Cancer patients were massaged for the purpose of this study and the themes addressed in this article are linked to the sexuality of the person being massaged and the masseuse (PVDR). In order to capture the richness of the cancer patients’ experience, the data are (...) presented in an unconventional way — in the form of poetry. The poems show that the damaged bodies of cancer patients are still sexual in nature. In this research, the body of the cancer patient is a discursive one inscribed with power, culture, society and history. There are also themes of managing the body, altered embodiments of femininity, altered embodiments of masculinity, intimacy, and speaking the unspeakable. (shrink)

Massage and sexuality in nursingThis paper draws upon data from a students' massage workshop, focuses on the students' discourse as they positioned diem‐selves as masseurs and considers relationships between nursing discourses and genderized self‐hood. For some students, there was a conflation of sex and massage. Massage was more heavily laden with implicit sexual meaning for male students than for female students. The latter were able to negotiate the ambiguities of working with people's bodies in a more comfortable way. This research (...) has implications for teaching students of nursing, particularly in relation to massage, and also nursing practice that involves care for the patient's body. (shrink)

Pagpectrpes on power, communication and the medical encounter: implications for nursing theory and practice Over the past few decades there has been an increasing push towards ‘nhancing’ communication in the medical encounter, with a focus on moving towards a ‘mutuality’ of patient and health care professional that reduces a perceived ‘power imbalance’ between the two. Doctors in particular have been consmcted as dominating and coercive, either consciously or unconsciously repressing patient's capacity for autonomy. Nurses have typically been represented as less (...) authoritarian in their dealings with patients in their idealized role as caring, kindly and empathetic health professionals. It is therefore often argued that the nurse‐patient relationship is more ‘equal’ and less repressive than the doctor‐patient relationship. This article explores critically these assertions in the context of the Foucauldian perspective on the role of power in the medical encounter, and draws out implications for nursing theory and practice. (shrink)