THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATION IN NURSING-CARE FOR ELDERLY PEOPLE - A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Communication in nursing care is an important topic assessing the spec ific needs of elderly patients and providing nursing care that is tail ored to the individual patient's needs. In this review of the literatu re, we describe the role attributed to communication in theoretical nu rsing models and we report how research in communication in nursing el derly patients has taken place over the last ten years. It appears tha t since the eighties there has been an increase in observation studies into nurse-patient communication. There still is, however, a lack of observation instruments to do justice to the interactive nature of nur se-patient communication. Special attention should be paid to reliabil ity and validity.