Abstract

Effective communication is, of course, vital to successful nurse-patient relationships and care. An array of empirical investigations in this arena has invoked communication accommodation theory (CAT), either interpretively or by driving the design of studies. However, most of these rely on earlier iterations of the theory and there have been many theoretical intergroup (and other) advances in recent years that could benefit developments in future research on nursing practices. This article not only addresses the potentialities available, but is really the first where general CAT Principles explicitly attend to nurses communications with medical and non-medical persons. Herein, we introduce recent formulations of the theory, then provide a flavor of prior CAT-related nursing studies. A novel selection of foundational CAT Principles are introduced explicitly crafted for nursing and, finally, allude to ways (with an attending conceptual model as a template) in which the theory could be mined for training programs. 

Keywords

communication accommodation theory, nursing, health care