Distal nursing

This paper considers the spatial dynamics of nurse–patient relationships within hospitals, primarily in the USA, under conditions of organizational restructuring, and situates them within social theoretical perspectives on space. As a human practice to which relationship is considered essential, nursing depends upon sustaining an often taken-for-granted proximity to patients. But hospital nursing, I argue in this paper, is increasingly constrained by spatial–structural practices that disrupt relationship and reduce or eliminate such proximity. Three kinds of proximity are threatened: physical, narrative, and moral. Examining these proximities through a place–space lens suggests that nursing is increasingly “distal” to patient care. There are potentially dangerous implications in this loss of proximity.