[Significant elements in nursing situations. Experience-orientated situational research in nursing]

Patients or residents and nurses often do not perceive situations where nursing care is provided in their full complexity. Furthermore they attach different significance to the individual elements of such situations as e.g. the actions of the persons involved, the structures of the relationships, the results of the nursing care or the surrounding conditions. The qualitative research study presented in the following is based on a specifically elaborated situational perspective and reveals those elements leading to experience any situation where nursing care is provided as successful or unsuccessful on the part of patients and nurses. The reconstruction of complex situations where nursing care is provided reveals decisive aspects for the active development of nursing action and points out that effective nursing care is distinguished by being related to the present and adapted to the respective situation.