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.