Threatening and violent situations at the workplaces have increased during the last few years. Nurses can encounter these situations in their work unexpectedly. The idea to the thesis was born on a practice placement The discussion with the nurse manager of the healthcare centre of Liminka showed that there was a need to have updated instructions or action guidelines for encountering a client who behaves challengingly.

Purpose of the project was to design and carry out the action guidelines for threatening and violent situations that can be useful for nurses who work at the reception area of the outpatient care. Our learning objective was to gain information and skills how to handle the situations professionally when facing a challenging client.

We started design the guidelines together with nurses and the nurse manager of the healthcare centre of Liminka to make sure they would meet their needs. As to the quality aims we paid attention to the contents, linguistic form and appearance. The final action guidelines were formed on the basis of the feedback that was received from the partner in cooperation and teachers.

The main point of action guidelines is adding the industrial safety working with clients .The action guidelines includes the knowledge about how nurses could identify the beginning violence situation, how to give the right ways of action for the challenging situations and to prevent dangerous situations.

We achieved the objectives set for the work well. We think that we have got much useful information about the project and can use it in the future work. Furthermore, we have better readiness to meet challenging situations in the customer work.

A challenge of the further development of the guidelines would be to have it included in the orientation folder of the healthcare centre. It is also important that the action guidelines are regularly updated. Furthermore, it would be useful to examine if the nurses have benefitted from the study.