The client-nurse relationship as experienced by public health nurses: toward better collaboration

This article presents the findings of a study concerned with the client-nurse relationship in public health nursing settings. The purpose was to look at the ways the client and public health nurse cooperate and to see what makes for efficient collaboration. A phenomenological-hermeneutic approach was adopted. The data consisted of essays written by the public health nurses and focused interviews, which were analyzed by phenomenological method. The outcome is an interpretive description of public health nurses' experiences of collaboration with their clients. Successful collaboration requires an active and committed involvement on both sides and a joint effort to help the client cope with his/her situation. This means there has to be not only a shared understanding of the ultimate goal of nursing, but also open and sincere confidence-building interaction for the creation of a sense of confidentiality and trustworthiness. The results suggest that the contents of the client-nurse relationship are extremely important to both sides of the dyad: both the client's well-being and the public health nurse's feeling of succeeding on the job will depend to a great extent on the kind of relationship they construct. Future research should also look at how clients experience their relationship with the public health nurse.