Editorial : Is technology responsible for nurses losing touch?

Touch by the laying – on of hands is an apparently simple but actually profoundly complex act. The therapeutic, comforting effects of touch have for centuries contributed to improving or maintaining health. Early studies showed us that therapeutic touch raised haemoglobin levels and more recent studies have shown that when people connect and especially when they touch each other, oxytocin (the feel good hormone) is released (Krieger 1975, Macdonald & Macdonald 2010, Pinker 2015). As Florence Nightingale in the mid-1880s guided the teaching of massage as part of nurses’ qualification at St Thomas Hospital, London, touch has been central to the work of a nurse (Krieger 1975).