Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

Non-verbal communication, ethics and etiquette in Community Nursing as part of reciprocity exchanges between community nurses and clients is my subject matter. I draw on my research on children who had cardiac surgery to highlight the importance of these skills by illustrating how a senior theatre nurse employed ethical conduct and non-verbal signals to professionally position herself in a surgical domain to assist the consultant surgeon and manage staff whilst caring for a vulnerable child. Her stance is taken for granted nursing role in hospital settings where behaviour must conform to long established, professional codes of conduct to achieve good clinical care. Indeed, this becomes implicit in most nurses demeanour and professional conduct. I turn to compare this scenario with nursing in community contexts and describe an equally complex engagement between one nursing sister and a group of parents and children who were in good recovery after their child�s cardiac surgery. I argue that in this setting, the nurse�s command of these often unconscious, professional skills contained a critical healing process and client-nurse dialogue. Here nonverbal communication, ethics and etiquette proved critical in enfolding clients back into a reflective, curing and caring engagement. Achieved in reciprocity, nurses� knowledge, demeanour and conduct restored client well-being by stabilizing a communal sense that pathways into and out of health system care remained functional and safe.

Biography

Email: Lauraine.Vivian@uct.ac.za