[The challenge of the health sciences to nursing].

Health science, a challenge to nurses! We live in an age of old people who are chronically ill and in need of nursing care. Modern medicine's reply to the panorama of sickness and demography is to renew attempts to conquer the somatic progression with technology and chemistry. Will nursing be sucked into these developments or will it tackle new duties, arising, for example, in health promotion and rehabilitation? There are also problems of reshaping the health-care systems. Nursing will have to be involved in this because of special professional experience and the developing nursing sciences. This contribution deals with the human face of medicine and nursing and touches on proposals for a patient-oriented redesign of the health-care system.