Working With Your Body in the Operating Room. The Case of Operating Room Nurses (RCIBO)

The undocumented observation, repeatedly observed in the operating rooms, of discomfort, including fainting, among medical and paramedical novices working in contact with surgical breaches raises questions about the mechanisms put in place to cope with what seems initially unimaginable. Indeed, accounts in the social sciences show that the surgical opening of a living person is, in some ways, a transgressive act, forbidden outside the operating room. By spilling blood, it induces a 'symbolic disorder' described by Mary Douglas, that is contained through ritualized practices, predispositions towards objectification, and injunctions to control affects. The use of surgical drapes allows for the partial erasure of the person being operated on, who is no longer seen as a subject, but as an object of care - a dehumanized body or 'image-object' described by Amandine Klipfel. It is possible that ORNs are gradually adapting to negotiate the reconfiguration of bodies in the operating room, the transgression inherent in the surgical opening of a living person, and the personal resonance this may have for them. The investigator questions the specificities of their profession and their physical, emotional, and cognitive relationships following the initial shock of confronting open bodies. Is it possible to grow accustomed to or adapt to open bodies to the point of no longer experiencing difficulties related to what was once unthinkable? The investigator aims to understand what becomes of these initially unrepresentable experiences and roles ORNs have in redefining the bodies present - the processes of objectification and rehumanization of patients in the operating rooms. This doctoral study grasps the cognitive and imaginary constructions they experience in France and Canada.