Tailoring nursing care to the individual client: empirical challenge of a theoretical concept

Tailoring of client-nurse interaction to the client's individuality is a central concept in Cox's Interaction Model of Client Health behavior, and represents a specification of the term individualization of care (Cox, 1982b). In this study, the empirical adequacy of Cox's definition of tailoring was challenged by comparing the content of naturally occurring encounters between an expert nurse and clients to content predicted by the definition. Analyses of the content of the encounters revealed that: client individuality was featured; client individuality and clinical assessment-management were considered in association with one another; and a majority of interventions were fitted to the individual client. The findings were interpreted as supportive of the empirical existence of tailoring as specified by Cox, and provided the bases for suggested refinements of the theoretical model.