Can Nurses Use Hypnosis?
By Eric Greenleaf PhD
Hypnosis is a naturally occurring human state brought about by trauma, focused attention, surprise and confusion , or deep reflection. In therapeutic associations, such as that between a nurse and a patient , the hypnotic state is shared and the shifts of attention are invited by the practitioner for the sake of the individual.
This invitation to a relaxed, focused and peaceful state is provided by the nurse’s language and emotional tone. Frequently, that tone is pleasant, attentive and matter-of-fact. The spoken invitation readies patient expectation for a clear and helpful encounter.
One example from my own life :
- When I was a youngster I had repeated rounds of an infection and was treated by injections of penicillin. These were agonizing, and I feared the arrival of the doctor or nurse, syringe in hand. One nurse, who became my favourite, approached my room singing. She sang, “Keep your sunny side up, up….” The song and the implied humor had me cooperative and calmly waiting for her arrival, and the fear decreased, the injection barely hurt at all after that. Nurses who vaccinate long lines of patients during flu season might say, “You’ll feel a pinch,” before giving the shots. I’ve even had a skilled dental surgeon pull an infected tooth from my jaw while he reduced my fear by saying, “You’ll hear a sound,” when he was ready to remove the tooth.
These approaches in which practitioners concentrate mutual attention on the goal, while decreasing fear and pain, utilize language and interpersonal feelings in a way familiar to all hypnotists , and, as well, to seasoned physicians, nurses, and parents . Joining with the patient by recognizing their needs and then pacing and directing an effective response – behavioral, conceptual and emotional – are the conversational means to hypnotic trance. Practitioners use surprise, even confusion, to bring about trance. They also use distraction to motivate dissociation of experience away from the site of injury or bleeding, for example, and toward recovery and healing.
As a specialist of hypnotherapy, I often prepare patients for surgery, helping them achieve peaceful and calm body-mind states while anticipating good blood flow with its healing chemistry, to begin recovery from surgery from the moment of the first incision, since that is what the body does naturally in any case. I encourage them to expect and to concentrate on the events of recovery and to remember that their unconscious minds resourcefully manage all manner of physiological actions and learning, from swallowing food to coordinating the breath and heart rate to healing wounds.
Though individuals in the modern age like to think of themselves as self-sufficient agents, our knowledge as specialists holds the place for a more basic human fact: we are all in this thing together. The nurse who eases my pain and sorrow and makes me more physically and emotionally comfortable is an agent of my body’s healing as important as the medicine she delivers. Learning and practicing hypnosis in a professional training program, such as those of the Milton H. Erickson Institute in the San Francisco Bay Area helps to refine these human interactions which guide us to become nurses, physicians or therapists in the first place. The set of verbal and non-verbal skills taught to students of hypnosis include: the ability to listen with focus on a patient’s goals, to give effective directives to patients, to receive and tell compelling stories to the patient’s benefit, and, to help establish states of physical ease and calm for patients, even during difficult procedures or uncertain times.