| Catheters, Slurs, and Pickup Lines: Professional Intimacy in Hospital Nursing Every day, hospital nurses must negotiate intimate trust and intimate conflict in an effort to provide quality health care. However, interactions between nurses and patients--which often require issues of privacy--are sometimes made more uncomfortable with inappropriate behavior, as when a patient has a racist and/or sexist outburst. Not all nurses are prepared to handle such intimacy, but they can all learn how to "be caring." Lisa C. Ruchti is Assistant Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching focus on the sociology of gender, intersectionality, and transnational feminist theories. |