Touch, communication and affect: a systematic review on the use of touch in healthcare professions
Abstract
The following systematic review explores the uses and understandings of physical, human-to-human touch engagements in healthcare professions. Given its central importance as both a diagnostic tool and a form of non-verbal communication, this review sought to understand the communicative, social and affective dimensions of touches a part of healthcare, medical or nursing interventions. We attempt to understand how touch communication seems to be structured in the literature, and what tends to be communicated via touch, but also to highlight how the dogmatic distinction between ‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’ touches might have obscured a socio-affective matrix within all touches. The synthesis produced was informed by 36 empirical studies involving either direct observation of touch practices, or recollection and discussion with healthcare professionals. The studies were selected from five databases in March 2022. In order to minimise risks of bias, the corpus was screened by two independent reviewers and underwent quality appraisal through the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. The final dataset was then analysed, synthesised and presented according to the principles of thematic synthesis. We outline how medical touch has been mostly categorised as either ‘instrumental’ or ‘expressive’, with only the latter usually described as serving a communicative purpose, despite its lower incidence. We further highlight how touch seems to be operating across a fragile boundary between…
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