ABSTRACT
In the provision of health care services for older people, the importance of “relationships” or “the relational dimension of professional/patient communication” scarcely needs to be argued. In terms of a multiple goals model of human communication (e.g., Tracy & Coupland, 1990), the potentially delicate and profound personal implications of illness always require professionals to attend to relational and identity goals in their interaction with patients, alongside medically oriented, instrumental goals. Indeed, we have to see relational goals as pursued in the service of the instrumental goals of medical and caring interactions (Coupland, Robinson, & Coupland, 1994; Fisher, 1991; Ragan, 1990). When patients are elderly, relational aspects of health can be even more important, for example, in cases where chronic conditions need to be “managed” rather than “cured,” or when patients’ social circumstances (e.g., loneliness or dependency) compound biomedical problems.
