Vulnerable bodies: competing discourses of intimate bodily care

Nursing practices are subject to intersecting and competing discourses, which give them different, sometimes contradictory, meanings. In this article, using a case of intimate bodily care, we explore the workings of these discourses in a nursing student's account of her first experience of bathing an elderly woman. In particular we were interested in how different meanings of nursing "care" figure into the student's story. Through our analysis, we realized that a range of contradictions and tensions structured the student's experience. These contradictions were primarily produced by a collision between two discourses: the student's commonsense way of understanding the intimacy of such an act (liberal humanist discourse) and the impersonal approach characteristic of institutionalized care (scientific medical discourse). This collision caused distress and confusion, such that the student became almost as vulnerable as her patient. We argue that this type of detailed analysis of a nursing student's experience may increase our understanding of the discursive struggles that occur for students during their shifting between classrooms and clinical sites, between theory and practice, in the process of becoming professionals. Understanding these struggles and the relationships of power that produce both nursing student and patient as "vulnerable bodies" is important for nurse educators because they offer opportunities for intervention in the shaping of nursing professionals.