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Abstract

The patient's will to recover is a powerful and important resource. The purpose of the study is to visualize the methods nurses use when they succeed in mobilizing the patient's will to co-operate towards goals of self-care. This for the purpose of giving nurses methods when providing care for patient's with a lot of resistance in the rehabilitation process. The study has a descriptive, qualitative design with interviews and narratives as the method to gather data. Data were analysed using a content analysis. The concept of will includes desire, meaning, hope and choice and actions that require energy. Mobilizing the patient's will was facilitated by methods that activated meaning and hope, by methods that activated choice as to stimulate the patient to process and to understand the situation, activate knowledge and strength to do the actions, and by the method balancing between autonomy and clear expression of expectations. The last method required that the patient could trust the nurse, and that the patient had some control over his own situation.