[The population-responsible work as a means of development of the public health nurse's work]

The purpose of the research was to explain the opinions of the public health nurses to the need of work development. Also it was aspired to the search, how the nurses who have moved to the population-responsible work have felt the change and what kind of need of education they have on the moving step. (N = 445). Most of the public health nurses saw as the care principle many advantages in population-responsible work methods, resulting in better nursing qualities but as a structural operation model its adaptation to use causes many organisational problems. The most essential prerequisities in accomplishing population-responsible work were felt by the public health nurses to be training in good planning and co-operation. As preventive to population-responsible work they felt negative attitudes and insufficient occupational skills. More than half of the public health nurses estimated that their present training is not sufficient in implementing population-responsible work. Length of employment, location of health care centre, method of labour division and vocational training of the public health nurses best explained the points of views on population-responsible work that the health nurses had.