'Paradoxing the Dialectic': The Impact of Patients’ Sexual Harassment in the Discursive Construction of Nurses’ Caregiving Roles

• In Event: Sexual Harassment Issues in Organizational Communication

Abstract

Within the light of paradox and dialectics, this study examines tensions in nurses’ construction of their caregiving roles. Nurses negotiate these roles within the dialectical poles of closeness and distance. Sexual harassment by patients, however, serves to destroy this ability to move between these poles, only allowing for distance. This “paradoxing of the dialectic” changes the ability to negotiate the dialectic and presents nurses with paradoxical decisions on coping with harassment and maintaining their caregiving role.

Authors

• Joshua Atkinson, Syracuse University

• Tammy S McGuire, Univ of Missouri, Columbia

• Debbie S. Dougherty, Univ of Missouri, Columbia