The meaning of nursing 200 years after Nightingale - perceptions of professional practice in the intensivist context

El sentido de la enfermería 200 años después de Nightingale- percepciones de la práctica profesional en el contexto intensivista

ABSTRACT

Objectives:  to know the meaning of contemporary nursing from the experience of intensive care nurses.

Methods:  qualitative research based on the theoretical framework of Symbolic Interactionism and the methodological framework of Interpretive Interactionism. The setting was a general hospital in Bahia, being carried out with 12 nurses working in intensive care for at least one year, through semi-structured interviews and drawing-text-theme technique, whose data were organized according to Miles and Huberman and analyzed upon the referential.

Results:  the sense of being a nurse was evidenced; a being for care, resulting from the experience in intensive care, capable of promoting the development of professional self-image, by causing, in nurses, other skills - besides the scientific ones, such as empathy, creativity, spirituality and compassion.

Final Considerations:  the sense of being a nurse, currently, expresses developments inherited from the Nightingalean proposal, but transcends the technical-managerial emphasis of this to a humanistic care perspective converging with our contemporary professional identity: a being for care.

Descriptors:
Nursing; Professional Practice; Perception; Intensive Care Units; Empathy