The purpose of this dissertation was to clarify how substance abuse rehabilitation customers at Uusikaupunki A-kilta (A-Guild) had experienced the implementation of customer-oriented approach in basic healthcare. The research assignment was to clarify the experiences the abuse rehab customers had had of their encounters with healthcare staff as well as the factors affecting the success or failure of such encounters. Added to this, the purpose was to find out whether the rehab customers’ opinions and wishes are taken into account in the basic healthcare. The objective was to generate information that could be put to good use when developing the co-operation between the members of the A-guild and the staff of basic healthcare.

The dissertation is qualitative research. The research material was collected by conducting a themecentred interview with five substance abuse rehabilitation cus-tomers who had volunteered to the experiment. The interviews were carried out in June 2016. The research material was analysed by using inductive content analysis.

The experiences of the interviewed about the implementation of customer-oriented approach in basic healthcare were strongly associated with their interaction with the healthcare staff. Based on the research results, the key factors in a successful encounter were good nursing and access to care, relevance, being listened to, staff’s attitude and keeping promises. Experiences of failure were related to difficulties of access to care, insufficient further plan of care or unclear care instructions, broken promises, ignorance, a lack of arguments, a change of nurse, great hurry and atti-tudes experienced poorly. First impression had accentuated meaning, and further still, the need of being taken seriously and listened to were expressed. Some of the interviewed felt that their opinions and wishes had been ignored, in particular when applying for enrolment to care.

In future, substance abuse rehab customers should experience improved customer orientation in basic healthcare. Hence, the nursing staff needs updating education in interaction as well as in substance abuse and mental health problems, for example. In addition, the experience of persons in charge of a customer or the service coun-sellors could be of good use in service guidance. When planning and developing the service, consulting both the service users and the experts by experience is increas-ingly advisable.