Visualism in community nursing: Implications for telephone work with service users

This article explores the potential effects of visualism (a prejudice in fa vor of the seen) on the perceived legitimacy of telephone work in community nursing. It discusses data from an exploratory study on telephone work, wh ich used guided interviews with a purposive sample of 14 community nurses. Interviewees expressed both positive and negative ideas about telephone wor k and had particular concerns about the assessment of people, context, prob lems, and comprehension by telephone. These issues are discussed with refer ence to publications on visualism, metaphor communication, and nursing work . The authors conclude that an awareness of the possible effects of visuali sm on ideas and practice could lead to improvements in both communication a nd assessment, whether carried out try telephone or face to face.