A meaningful everyday life and different kinds of expressive ways of re-habilitation increase an elderly person’s feeling of being in control of their own lives and creates an environment where people can express themselves and to be heard. To achieve this, creates a new kind of challenge for nurses and directors to generate good quality care work, where a person’s lifelong need to be expressive is taken notice of.

The significance of the thesis was to sum up information with ways of lit-erature review, to create an overview about providing a stimulating every-day life and creative methods used to achieve this, that can be found in other research work, books and professional journals. The focus was on nurses’ perspective and to those facts that advance and also make it possi-ble to develop the will of an individual but also the work community itself to create meaningful everyday life in care work. The significance of lead-ership in the use of creative methods in nursing was discussed.

From the experience of nurses it is seen that time, staff resources, the de-manding physical burden of the work, lack of education and information, routine methods, negative attitude and also the shortage of encouragement and support from the director’s limit the use of creative methods. The things that advance the use of creative methods are personal attitude and the ability to use one’s own personality in the care work and also forming a personal relationship with the patient. The results of the thesis can be used to advance a work community that is open to the idea of stimulative care work.