Abstract
In this paper the authors discuss how to define methods used to provide nursing, and how to find proper ways of evaluating the effect of nursing treatment and nursing interventions. The term «method» is defined as a planned procedure intended to achieve a specific result. The Swedish Society of Nursing initiated in the year 2003 an inventory regarding possible methods used in nursing that could be evaluated regarding its effects in patient care. By an extensive, but not thorough, literature review over 100 different methods were found and listed. These were sorted into six areas; value-based approaches in the care relationship (a), nursing methods for the provision of support and treatment (b), methods for assessing suffering/well-being in health, ill-health and disease (c), methods for preventing ill-health and/or treating ill-health (d), methods for treating and evaluating planned individual care (e) and methods for the organisation of individual care (f). In this paper the authors give selected examples from these six areas and also argue for the need for alternative evaluation approaches. When nursing researchers and clinicians actively focus at considering the value and effect of different interventions it will help facilitating the implementation of evidence-based knowledge into the care of the patient.