The purpose of this study was to describe nurses' judgement in elderly home care. We regarded this judgement in terms of the reasons why nurses decided to provide the nursing care for elderly persons. The subjects were 11 public health nurses and 9 visiting nurses who cared for the same elderly persons and had more than 4 years of experience. Semi-structured interviews were tape-recorded and data obtained were categorized according to the reasons for nursing care. The results were as follows. Eight categories were derived from 600 cases : 1. To maintain the health of all members of a family ; 2. To maintain family caregiving on a continuous basis ; 3. To improve QOL, 4. To respect the person cared for and their families' feeling ; 5. To smooth human relations in a family ; 6. To help clients use social resources well ; 7. To support clients as home care teams ; and 8. To find more effective means for supporting. These findings suggested that nursing care judgement concerning the elderly at home was based on reasons directly linked with care goals, reasons as to means to achieve care goals, and reasons involving the care effectiveness or efficiency.