Representação do cuidar em enfermagem: uma visão de professores e estudantes

Acknowledging our responsibility in the training of future nurses and favouring an attitude of continual questioning of the caring practice, we have attempted to seize the structure of caring within the framework of the teaching/learning process in order to clarify its sense and meaning. We took the examination of the development of thought in nursing as our starting point, taking into account a set of concepts, assumptions and nursing theories as well as some of the research already developed. Other concepts such as representations, social and gender identities have also contributed to our understanding of the actors’ behaviour rendered in the form of action. The aims and the problem have put forward a qualitative study which allowed us to penetrate the symbolic universe of teachers and students’ representations. The subject was approached through in-depth semi-structured interviews with twelve teachers (six males and six females) and twelve students (six males and six females) from a Nursing College. We followed the method of analysis recommended by Jean Watson. Our study is centred on the representation of caring in nursing amongst teachers and students and is the result of the interception of three independent axis of analysis: “the sense and meaning of caring", where two categories arise, the concept of nursing and the concept of caring that show how caring in nursing is conceived and experienced by teachers and students; “training and caring", where we find the teaching/learning process category, that leads up to the conclusion that caring derives its sense from the basic aspects of professional training, i.e., in the nature, purpose, intentionality and identity of caring in actual practice, assuming that one reaches sense through experience; and “gender and nursing", with the category of social representation that results from the association between nursing and the female gender and the way the latter has set the standard of caring practice in the course of time. Maria Clara Batalha Reis Roquette Viana Neto The main conclusions of our study confirm that caring is the essence of the profession, and that it is a concept that combines action with knowledge and emotion. It is therefore important to encourage a set of attitudes inherent to caring, a process that should be developed within the context of the training of future nurses and, simultaneously, in caring practice