The aim of the study was to explore nurses’ experience of person-centered relational care in the context of critical care.

Key interview questions were developed based on the human-to-human relationship model suggested by Travelbee. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 11 nurses having more than 2 years of working experience in intensive care units. An interpretative phenomenological analysis was conducted to analyze the data.

Four super-ordinate and nine sub-ordinate themes were identified. Emerged super-ordinate themes were as follows: (1) encountering a live person via patient monitoring systems; (2) deep empathic connection; (3) humanistic and compassionate care, and (4) accompanying the journey to the end. Study findings revealed that nurses in intensive care units experienced ‘balancing emotions’ and ‘authenticity’ in caring when entering human-to-human relationships with dying patients. The phenomenon of person-centered relational care in intensive care units was found to subsume intrinsic attributes of empathy, compassion, and trust, similar to the central concepts of Travelbee's theory.

The interpretative findings in this study provide deeper understanding of Travelbee's human-to-human relationship model. The technological environment in intensive care units did not hinder experienced nurses from forming human-to-human relationships. These themes need to be emphasized in critical care nursing education as well as in nursing management. The results of this study will contribute to understanding nurse-patient caring relationships in depth, and help improve the quality of nursing care in intensive care units.

The purpose of this study was to propose optimal hospitalization fees for nurse staffing levels and to improve the current nursing fee policy.

A break-even analysis was used to evaluate the impact of a nursing fee policy on hospital's financial performance. Variables considered included the number of beds, bed occupancy rate, annual total patient days, hospitalization fees for nurse staffing levels, the initial annual nurses' salary, and the ratio of overhead costs to nursing labor costs. Data were collected as secondary data from annual reports of the Hospital Nursing Association and national health insurance.

The hospitalization fees according to nurse staffing levels in general hospitals are required to sustain or decrease in grades 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7, and increase in grades 5 and 6. It is suggested that the range between grade 2 and 3 be sustained at the current level, the range between grade 4 and 5 be widen or merged into one, and the range between grade 6 and 7 be divided into several grades.

Readjusting hospitalization fees for nurse staffing level will improve nurse-patient ratio and enhance the quality of nursing care in hospitals. Follow-up studies including tertiary hospitals and small hospitals are recommended.

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 main purpose of this study was to explore nurse-patient interaction behaviors and patient satisfaction with the interaction in the emergency department.

This study used video technology to record complete conversations between the nurse and patient, thus obtaining the interactions naturally occurring in a clinical setting. The participants were 28 nurses and 63 patients in the emergency department at one university hospital located in Seoul. The data was collected from November, 2002 to April, 2003. The video recordings were observed for 4 hours for each case and coded using an adapted version of Roter's Interaction Analysis System (RIAS), which yields frequencies of thirty-six types of interaction behaviors.

The information exchange related to therapeutic items including medications, simple orientation, and situational positive talk were characterized in the nurses' interaction behaviors. Giving information about one's own condition, questions about therapeutic regimen, and showing worry were characterized in patient interaction behaviors. The patients' satisfaction with the interaction was 37.75.9 (range 9-45).

The emergency nurse-patient interaction behavior was task-related. The results suggest that identification of effective interaction behavior in the Emergency department and an interaction skill training program could increase patient satisfaction.