e concepts and structures of relationship-centered care have been connected to a "biopsychosocial model" that defines systems theory in terms of the nexus of organizational behavior and the network of dynamic interactions (patient-doctor; doctor-family; patient-nurse, etc.) that emerge in a given health-care situation (Williams & Others, 2000, p. 79). In the nursing profession, correlation has also been identified between relationship-centered care and the emergence in recent decades of the concept of team-based medical treatment, with health-care professionals such as physicians, nurses, social workers, and other specialists engaging in an interdisciplinary effort of patient care (NLN, 1998). The work of psychology theorist Carl D. Rogers (1960) does not appear to be acknowledged as a source of the term relationship-centered care; however, in developing the principles of what he termed client-centered therapy (later person-centered), Rogers could be considered as an indirect source for the modality. That is because of his theoretical focus on what he calls the whole person, i.e., the complex of emotions, experiences, relationships with significant others, and behaviors that projects outward from the organism. This general idea is present in the notion of relationship-centered care, which does not stop with health-care delivery at the somatic organism but which takes account of the multiple psychological and experiential inputs to well-being where medical needs are concerned. In 1994, what was to prove a seminal study of the relationship-centered-care discipline called for increased "competencies" in a whole range of "complexities and uncertainties involved in caring for people's health in relationships with patients, communities, and other practitioners" (Pew-Fetzer, 1994).
Of particular concern to nursing-discipline commentators on this subject has been the relevance of cultural concerns--not strictly medical in nature--to medical-...