Perioperative nursing and the politics of presence: Challenging hierarchy through relational knowledge
Mots-clés :
perioperative nursing, feminist epistemology, standpoint theory, relational knowledge, epistemic resistance, nursing knowledge, care ethicsRésumé
This reflection offers a critical examination of perioperative nursing through the lens of feminist epistemology, which examines how gender and power shape what is recognized as legitimate knowledge, and standpoint theory, which understands knowledge as situated and shaped by one’s social and professional position. Within highly technical and hierarchical surgical environments, perioperative nurses rely on relational, embodied, and anticipatory knowledge that remains undervalued in dominant biomedical discourse. Perioperative nursing expertise is expressed through ethical presence, vigilance, advocacy, and clinical judgment informed by experience and pattern recognition. Such judgment may be described as intuitive when its underlying knowledge is not readily articulated; however, intuition in expert practice can reflect accumulated experiential knowledge rather than an absence of clinical reasoning. Drawing on care ethics and nursing philosophy, this work traces how patriarchal systems devalue relational knowledge and uphold authority through standardization and control. Perioperative nurses navigate steep power gradients while anchoring continuity, moral accountability, and patient safety. From this perspective, such nursing labour constitutes a form of epistemic resistance; resistance to dominant assumptions about whose knowledge counts and what forms of knowing are considered authoritative. Reframing perioperative practice in this way invites broader recognition of relational competence as central to ethical, effective, and just healthcare delivery.
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