The nurse as mediator of pollution: the influence of the nursing role on the socialization of disease and illness

Nursing plays an influential role in the socialization of disease and illness, that is, how they become integrated within the social context of people living together in the community of human society Generally, it may be argued that physicians adopt the ideology that disease is fixed within a framework of a medical model, which frequently ignores how an individual feels when sick and what effects the sickness will have on an individual's perception of everyday life Nurses, on the other hand, adopt a more flexible approach in their care, which is based on recognizing that the body responds dynamically during the experience of sickness This paper sets out to explore why nursing has evolved with the concept of an illness model as opposed to a disease model, which so often underpins the approach adopted by physicians Traditionally, the care of the young, sick and infirm was delegated to women and set within the realms of domesticity Today, as in the past, many aspects of the nursing role involve polluting aspects that result from sickness These are skilfully, subtly and tacitly managed by nurses in order to protect themselves and create an environment of permission in which the sufferer's sickness is contained and managed Over the past couple of decades, innovations in nursing have recognized the effects of disease and illness on the individual within their own social context, and attempts have been made through the evolvement of the nursing process to focus on an individual's sickness as a lived‐body experience However, more recently, critics of the nursing process have claimed that, in essence, the nursing process has done nothing more than merely reproduce the original reductionalism that was previously encountered through a task‐allocation approach to nursing