Research Article Entrepreneurship Education in Health Care Education L. Salminen, 1 E. Lindberg, 1 M.-L. Gustafsson, 1 J. Heinonen, 2 and H. Leino-Kilpi 3 1 Department of Nursing Science, University of Turku, Lemmink¨ aisenkatu 1, 20014 Turku, Finland 2 Turku School of Economics, TSE Entre, University of Turku, Finland 3 Department of Nursing Science, Hospital District of South-West Finland, University of Turku, Turku, Finland Correspondence should be addressed to L. Salminen; leena.kaarina.salminen@utu.fi Received 28 May 2014; Revised 13 October 2014; Accepted 20 October 2014; Published 11 November 2014 Academic Editor: Yi-Shun Wang Copyright © 2014 L. Salminen et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. is study describes the content of entrepreneurship education in health care education and the kinds of teaching methods that are used when teaching about entrepreneurship. Health care entrepreneurship has increased in many countries in recent decades and there is evidence that entrepreneurs have also a role in public health care. erefore the health care professionals need to be educated to have the entrepreneurial skills. Education in the field of health care is still based on traditional forms of teaching and does not give enough attention to the issue of becoming an entrepreneur. e data was collected from teachers ( = 111) via e-mail from six Finnish polytechnics. e data were analysed statistically and the open-ended questions were analysed via content analysis. Approximately 23% of the teachers had taught about entrepreneurship. e most popular teaching methods were company visits and cases, lecturing, and project work. e courses dealt with establishing a company, entrepreneurship in general, and marketing. Nearly all of the teachers had cooperated with the entrepreneurs or with the companies in question. Approximately 33% of the teachers took entrepreneurship into consideration oſten in other courses related to entrepreneurship. 1. Introduction Entrepreneurship in the health care sector is not a new phenomenon. Already before World War II, many nurses worked as entrepreneurs. Aſter the war, nurses began to work in public services in many countries due to social and economic changes. Approximately 1% of all nurses work as entrepreneurs [1]. A nurse is defined as an entrepreneur if he or she offers different nursing services in private-sector markets: care, education, research, and administrative work [1–3]. Social, political, and economic factors such as an eco- nomic crisis, the dissatisfaction of nurses with their work, and changes in the health needs of the population and consumers have caused more nurses to become entrepreneurs during the last decades [1, 2, 4]. e development, scope of practise, and regulation of nurse entrepreneurs will also depend on economic infrastructure and policies implemented at the national, regional, and local levels [1, 5]. e notion of entrepreneurship is not relevant for clinical nurses only; it is relevant for any nurses who are in managerial positions and need to understand changes in the organizational process. During times of economic uncertainty, knowledge about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills can be exploited when health care staff needs to figure out how to do more with fewer resources [4]. Some studies indicate that a lack of competence in entrepreneurship is a major barrier for nurses who want to become entrepreneurs [6–8]. Nurse entrepreneurs claim that when their education is based on the traditional forms of nursing, it does not provide them with enough knowledge about entrepreneurship or establishing and running a company [7–9]. erefore, a critical discussion about the role of education in enhancing entrepreneurship among nurses is needed. is study addresses the issue by describing entrepreneurship education in six different Finnish polytechnics. Based on a survey conducted among teachers in the health care field, we focus on the scope and nature of entrepreneurship education as well as on the methods that teachers use when addressing the issue of entrepreneurship. 2. Background Entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly important within the health care sector as societal changes give space for new entrepreneurs in the field [1, 4, 10]. However, quite Hindawi Publishing Corporation Education Research International Volume 2014, Article ID 312810, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/312810