Conception of the human-to-human relationship in nursing

It is obvious from the analysis of these publications focused on nursing, that the definition of this term is based on a nurse–patient relationship by some authors. The aim of our survey is to elucidate the nurse–patient relationship based on the approach developed by Joyce E. Travelbee, who is an American psychiatric nurse, educator and writer. She introduced the concept of interpersonal relationships in the 1960s. We used textual analysis of documents to process data for this paper, during which there was a historical and analytical approach adopted. Only publications focused on concepts of one-to-one relations in the approach of Joyce E. Travelbee were subjects of the textual analysis. Globally, there is a relatively small number of studies dealing with this issue regarding the approach of Joyce E. Travelbee. On the basis of textual analysis, we concluded that Joyce E. Travelbee was successful in highlighting the importance of the mutual understanding in creating interpersonal relationships, communication skills of nurses, overcoming of nurse–patient stereotypes and the emphasis on meeting the needs of both patients and nurses.