Abstract
The distorted wave is introduced into the relativistic impulse approximation to generate the Dirac optical potentials for proton elastic scattering. Those potentials, produced by folding the target ground state wavefunction with the free nucleon-nucleon interactions, are used to reevaluate scattering observables, such as differential cross section, analysing power and spin rotation function, for proton elastic scattering from 12C and 16O at Elab = 200 MeV, respectively. The inclusion of the distorted wave in the original relativistic impulse approximation has brought out better results of the observables, especially at small scattering angles.