The Mechanical Body and the Lived Body: Heart Failure Clinical Nursing Practice

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Cartesian model has advanced modern-day nursing practices by separating the body from the mind and the person from the world. This model shifted nurses’ focus away from patients’ perceptions and lived experiences and toward the mechanical body. However, Merleau-Ponty’s perspective that a lived-body approaches offers an alternative and occurs when caring for patients as part of the nursing practice. AIM: This paper aims to present Merleau- Ponty’s and Descartes’s views of the body in greater depth and discuss their implications on nursing science and practice in patients with heart failure and the challenges they pose. METHODS: This publication also discussed how nurses care for the body as if it were a machine and contrast it with the recommendations for clinical nursing practice that will empower nurses to acknowledge the body as a lived body in their professional practice. RESULTS: Patients treated as machines may be able to achieve a cure for their illness, but they may not be able to find meaning in it or achieve healing if treated as machines. CONCLUSION: In the lived-body approach, nurses can also apply Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to nursing science and patient care, which will lead to the development of holistic care and will improve the quality of patient care and patients’ general well-being.