The home is the natural setting for the development of informal care. The work that nurses are required to develop in this context (the carer/the elderly dependent/the home) focuses on training and educational activities to assist these two groups, such as demonstrating care activities to help dependent seniors, instruction in self-care techniques and teaching strategies for the use of human and material resources.

This article analyzes care education interventions performed by nurses, and the factors that facilitate, or limit, health care training.

This is a qualitative, descriptive study designed to be flexible and openly analytical in its approach to the research problem and the dynamic nature of the home environment. Triangulation of the methodological techniques and study subjects was applied.

Nursing interventions related to professional attitudes, such as encouraging communication and facilitating teaching; communication interventions in health education and counseling; and technical interventions aimed at improving access to health information and support for the informal carer. Lack of will, the advanced age of the carer, emotional state and work overload are factors that undermine care instruction, which if reversed, would become learning facilitators. The lack of time and resources in the home are the major limiting factors on care teaching, according to nurses. Evidence from our study suggests that care in the home is considered a key primary health care strategy, one in which nurses play a significant role.

The aim of this study is to illuminate primary health care (PHC) nurses’ experiences of physical activity referrals (PARs).

Despite extensive knowledge about the substantial health effects physical activities can produce, fewer and fewer people in our modern society regularly engage in physical activity. Within health care and, particularly, within the PHC arena, nurses meet people on a daily basis who need help to engage in a healthier lifestyle. The possibility of issuing written prescriptions for physical activities, often referred to as PARs, has been introduced as a tool to support such lifestyles. However, even though PHC nurses can prescribe physical activities, studies investigating their experience in this type of nursing intervention are rare.

For this study, 12 semi-structured interviews were conducted with PHC nurses, and the transcribed texts were analysed using a qualitative content analysis.

Two categories – PARs, an important nursing intervention, and PARs, the necessity of organisational support – reflected the nurses’ experiences in using PARs.

Our findings suggest that viewing the PAR as a complex intervention, with all that this entails, might be one approach to increasing the number of PARs being issued. Simpler systems, more time and the potential for testing the effectiveness of follow-ups could be possible ways of achieving this.