The purpose of this study was to collect information of nurses’ know-how on the nursing of a contact isolation patient. Working life was the base of this study. The study was conducted in one of the health care organiza-tions in Southern Finland. The data of this study was collected on the medical and surgical wards with an electrical quantitative questionnaire. The questionnaire was dedicated to the wards’ registered nurses and prac-tical nurses. The objective was to improve nursing of a contact isolation pa-tient.

The purpose of isolation is to prevent the spread and transmission of mi-crobes causing infections among patients and the nursing staff. The spreading of the bacteria, the transmission of which happens by contact, is tried to be prevented by contact isolation. The right course of actions, how you should operate in the nursing of the contact isolation patient prevents infections from spreading. The actions of nurses have a significance to in-fections transmission between patients and the nursing staff.

The results of this study were that the know-how of nurses about the nurs-ing of the contact isolation patient was at a relatively good level. Nurses’ own ways to operate with protective equipment attracted the most atten-tion. From the results it came up that nurses did not use eye guards in treatments where there was a splatter danger.

The responding was so little that it weakens the reliability of the results. That is why one of the further actions would be to renew the enquiry and try to have more extensive responses so that the results would be more re-liable. Then it would be better to find some further actions and possible development reasons.