2. Methods
2.1. Setting and sample
This article is based on qualitative data collected from a total of 38 counseling sessions in a Finnish hospital. The research material took shape as all volunteered nurses were registered in the hospital in question. Nineteen nurses participated in this study. Each nurse conducted two video- taped counseling sessions with different patients. The nurses themselves decided which patients they asked to participate and the patients gavetheir consentreadily.Only two patients refused to participate in this study. Nearly all nurses and patients were unfamiliar to each other. Sometimes they had never seen each other before the counseling because a ward clerk had asked for the patient's permission before his/her arrival in the hospital. Usually nurses and patients had been acquainted in the hospital and had met, at most, a few times during hospitalization before the videotaping. All partici- pants volunteered to take part in the research, signed a research license, and granted permission for the transcribed data to be used in publications.