Leadership in nursing is a relatively unexplored area of research. Further knowl-edge about doctors and staff nurses’ views on what is included in this area could gain development in nursing and thereby the qualities of patient care. The aim of this study is to gain further knowledge about doctors and assistant nurses’ views on what is included in the area of leadership in nursing. The method used was semi-structured interview. The selection of informants was four doctors and four assistant nurses. The analysis method was thematic content analysis inspired by Burnard (1991). The analysis resulted in the following main categories: General view, ability of cooperation and main responsibility. The result showed that doc-tors- and assistant nurses' views on what was included in the area of leadership in nursing to a large extent was congruent to job assignments written in The National Board of Health and Welfare’s competence description for registered nurses. However, the leadership role of nursing was not obvious and acknowledged by all the informants.