The purpose of this thesis was to create a general view of nurses’ well-being, work satisfaction and its´ development in the past years. This thesis was composed of two examinations, nurses´ well-being and working conditions and six thesis of well-being. This thesis was conducted as a literature review.

There are changes going on among social and health care service construction of health care and legislation, which influences immensely on nurses´ job description and need for increased education. At the same time, old employees will retire from social and health care, and there will be lack of skilled labor and young nurses´ are increasingly dissatisfied with their occupation. Because of the changes of organization and nurses´ job description, the responsibility and amount of work will increase, which causes pressure in working life. Because of working pressure, disaffection will increase and well-being is going to decrease.

The changes in organization, the lack of resources, the quantity of patients and patients´ problems, the fear of violence, failure in leadership, negative working atmosphere, shift work and low salaries, weaken the well-being. Main factors, which increase well-being among nurses, are encouraging of leader, the feedback from the manager, open working atmosphere, versatile, challenging and interesting work. The goals for developing the well-being are changes of organization, attending leadership, individual developing, functional working community, decreasing workload, caring about working atmosphere and well-being.