[Are clients' well-being and everyday life starting points in nursing practice?]

In this paper the goal of nursing and nursing care are explored from the point of view of clients and nurses. The basis of this text is on PhD, dissertation Health, wellbeing and nursing as experienced by municipal residents and nurses (see Astedt-Kurki 1992b). The aim of that study was to gain more information on people's individual health and of the possibilities of nurses working in Finnish primary health care have in supporting their clients. The experiences of health as results of the study reveal individual meanings. Clients' expressions of health contain different kinds of values of good life, eg. peace, freedom, religiousness, humour, human relations etc. Everyday-life experiences of health in this study are feelings of health, knowledge about one's state of health and action, eg. personal self-care. There are differences in views of health and nursing between clients and nurses. It seems that nurses view clients' health also in a disease-oriented manner although there are efforts to client-centered nursing. Nurses did not describe eg. religiousness as a part of clients' health and wellbeing. Another example of the differences between conceptions of nurses and clients is health education, which mostly in nursing care is based on general knowledge of health as opposite of disease without taking into consideration the client's personal life and situation. If the basic interest of nursing practice is eliminating diseases, nursing care is usually carried out by performing different tasks on clients. Part of the nursing care is client-oriented nursing. Awareness of the significance of health and wellbeing in human life helps nurses taking care of their clients individually.