The purpose of this study was to identify and understand nurses' experiences of the death of patients in geriatric hospitals.

Van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenological analysis was applied in the interpretation of experiential descriptions of seven nurses who had experienced the death of patients in a geriatric hospital.

The essential subjects derived from the experience of the nurses on the death of patients in a geriatric hospital are covered in the following 7 themes. 'Placed in death site', 'Difficult repetition of death and farewell', 'Emotional waves that rushes in after farewell', 'Dilemmas in a place with no preparation to greet expected death', 'Getting dull from continually being struck with sorrow', 'Being together with living death', and 'Showing courtesy for a good farewell and living well'.

The results of this research will contribute to the development of policy on all the deaths of patients in geriatric hospitals and suggest basic data that need to be applied in real practice and directions to introduce plans for realistic improvements in nursing care of deathbed patients in geriatric hospitals.

The purpose of the study was to identify functional structure and patterns of dialogue sequence in conversations between elderly patients with dementia and nurses in a long-term care facility.

Conversation analysis was used to analyze the data which were collected using video-camera to capture non-verbal as well as verbal behaviors. Data collection was done during February 2005.

Introduction, assessment, intervention, and closing phases were identified as functional structure. Essential parts of the conversation were the assessment and intervention phases. In the assessment phase three sequential patterns of nurse-initiated dialogue and four sequential patterns of patient-initiated dialogue were identified. Also four sequential patterns were identified in nurse-initiated and three in patient-initiated dialogues in the intervention phase. In general, "ask question", "advise", and "directive" were the most frequently used utterance by nurses in nurse-initiated dialogue, indicating nurses' domination of the conversation. At the same time, "ask back", "refute", "escape", or "false promise" were used often by nurses to discourage patients from talking when patients were raising questions or demanding.

It is important for nurses to encourage patient-initiated dialogue to counterbalance nurse-dominated conversation which results from imbalance between nurses and patients in terms of knowledge and task in health-care institutions for elders.

The purpose of this study was to understand conversations and to identify typical conversational problems between nurses and patients with dementia.

A conversation analysis method was used. The data was collected in a geriatric institutional setting, using a videotape recorder, and transcribed. The transcribed data was analyzed in terms of expressions, contents, and relationships to identify communicative problems and their resolutions.

Among a total of 532 episodes, 440(82.7%) were identified as nurse-involved episodes. In addition, 66 of the 440 episodes were selected based on the significance of the conversation. The communicative problems between nurses and patients in terms of expressions were identified as “directive and authoritative expressions”, “emotional and competitive expressions”, “evasive and on-looking expressions”, and “excessive use of title only”, such as calling them granny or grandpa without proper names. In terms of content and relationships, “lack of themes in psychosocial areas” and “nurse-led relations” were identified respectively as communicative problems.

The results of this study will provide substantial guidelines for nurses in caring for elderly patients with dementia by deeply understanding linguistic structures and problems of everyday conversations between nurses and patients with dementia.