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Background: Family systems nursing embraces the view that one family member’s illness affects other family members and vice versa. Family nursing developed as a way for nurses to work with families to promote health. Previously, teachers performed most of the education on health-promoting conversations with families on campus. Because online education is increasingly requested in nursing, this article evaluates teaching family systems nursing by using synchronous online health-promoting conversations.

Methods: Fifteen registered nurses attended the course “Health-Promoting Family Focused Nursing”, an advanced-level nursing elective 10-week course. The course used technology enhanced learning and was evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. Students and teachers participated in semi-structured focus group interviews analyzed qualitatively. The students filled in a traditional course evaluation. Students responded before and after the course to the multidimensional research instrument “Families’ Importance in Nursing Care—Nurse’s Attitudes” (FINC-NA).

Results: The students were satisfied with the course and the synchronous health-promoting conversations. They learned to “think family” and acknowledged the importance of inviting families to take part in the care of a family member. They stated that the online practice had helped them gain a useful tool for their future family nursing practice. The teachers appreciated working in a team to develop the course. At the start of the project they viewed the online technology as a challenge. However, during the course they saw many pedagogical possibilities with the synchronous meetings and that the online family conversation training worked well. The ability to record the meetings offered educational advantages and the opportunity for students to reflect on the conversations. Even if the students rated families importance in nursing care positively prior to the course on FINC-NA, the students still gave the following domains even stronger support post-course: Family as a resource in nursing care, Family as a burden, and Family as own resource.

Conclusions: Family systems nursing and health-promoting conversations with families, comprising interaction between several participants, can be learned using online pedagogical methods. Furthermore, the belief that health-promoting family conversations need to be held with all participants in the same room has been challenged.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the perceptions of primary health-care nurses (PHNs) about clinical demands and future challenges.

METHOD: Qualitative content-analysis of open questions from a questionnaire. A total of 121 PHNs from health-care districts in northern Sweden filled in a questionnaire during a mandatory educational day.

RESULTS: Key issues that were raised included: defending the specific professional role of the PHNs; strengthening their self-governance and authority; and ensuring adequate care in the future through education that focuses more on nursing practice than on academic work.

CONCLUSION: To ensure that the role of the PHN continues to develop, it is necessary to enable them to articulate, discuss, and evaluate their profession and to learn, in concrete forms, how to implement science in clinical practice.