Expanding the conversation: A Person-centred Communication Enhancement Model

The intricacy and impact of human communication has long captured the attention of philosophers, scholars and practitioners. Within the realm of care and service provision, efforts to maximize outcomes through optimal person-provider communication have drawn research and clinical focus to this area for several decades. With the dawning of the person-centred care movement within healthcare, and in particular long-term care home and dementia care settings, improvement in care providers’ use of person-centred communication strategies and enhancement of relationships between residents, their families and care providers are desired outcomes. Thus, several person-centred care and communication theoretical perspectives have been employed to ground study in this field. However, a comprehensive theoretical position to underpin person-centred communication in dementia and older adult research does not exist to our knowledge. To offer expansion to the theoretical work in this emerging field, a Person-Centred Communication Enhancement Model for long-term care and dementia care is proposed, as well as rationale for its development. This discussion will also provide an overview and critique of the extant philosophies, theories, frameworks and models that have been utilized in the study of person-centred communication within the context of long-term care and dementia care.