title: Research on nurse-patient relationships: problems of theory, problems of practice.
abstract: Research, theoretical and educational literature on interpersonal relations between nurses and patients has proliferated since the 1960s. This has generated a range of divergent accounts of what the nurse-patient relationship (NPR) ought to be; how this should be achieved; and how the NPR is constituted in practice. In this paper--through a selective review of the literature--the development of two contending perspectives on NPR and on nurse-patient interaction (NPI) characterized as technocratic and contextual, is discussed, and related to the increasingly problematic status of the relationship between nurses and patients in nursing theory and research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Edinburgh.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: May
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D007587:Job Description; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009732:Nursing Care; D015399:Nursing Research; D009740:Nursing Staff / Q000523:psychology; D009742:Nursing Theory; D012380:Role; D012649:Self Concept; D012931:Social Environment; D013240:Stereotyping