One important role performed by the hospital nurse is that of health teacher to elderly patients. Often nurses teach elderly patients the techniques of self-injection, how to monitor their dietary regimens, specialized hygiene techniques, and how to detect the physiological changes they may expect as a chronic disease advances. From the nurse's perspective, the efficacy of the teaching role may be hampered by elderly patients who ignore careful instructions, quiz the nurse about irrelevant matters, or shower the nurse with verbal or physical abuse. One cause of ineffective teaching interactions may be the nurse's inability to recognize the patient's salient norms, which include preferential treatment, empathy, acceptance of their "lay" assessment, and avoidance of derogatory labels. Communication specialists could meet the needs of the teaching nurse by offering a ten-session communication course for the systematic assessment of the salient norms the elderly patient might bring to the hospital. The sessions would focus on (1) a definition of norms, (2) verbatim techniques for gathering data, (3) the preparation for video taping data of norm violations, (4) reporting on the video tape sessions, (5) conducting a verbatim assignment, (6) preparing a norm profile, (7) practice with a surrogate patient, and (8) a final report on the encounters. (A sample verbatim practice is appended.) (HOD)