Touch creates a healing bond in health care Touch is a powerful tool in medicine.

In contemporary health care, touch contact between a doctor’s hand and a patient appears to be on its way out. Touch creates a human bond that is particularly needed in this increasingly hands-off, impersonal age.

For thousands of years, touch has been recognized as an essential part of the healing arts. Native American healers relied on touch to draw out sickness, and kings and queens were long believed to possess the “Royal Touch,” through which the mere laying on of hands could heal.

We have been studying this phenomenon in our own institution, looking at the effect of touch not only on patients but on the parents of patients admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit.

The project, called ROSE (Reach Out, Soothe, and Embrace), sought to determine whether increasing opportunities to touch patients could promote parent well-being without compromising patient safety.

Instead of merely determining whether patients could be taken off the ventilator or fed, we also identified patients who could be safely touched and even held in their parents’ arms.

First, increasing opportunities for touch does not compromise patient safety. But when touch is encouraged in the right ways and for the right reasons, it is good for patients, family, friends and health professionals alike. Medicines and words both have healing power, but so does touch, and it is perhaps the most widely available, financially responsible and safest tool in the healing arts. When we touch, we connect, and when we connect, we create a healing bond for which there is simply no substitute.