The purposes of the present study were to: a) assess the nurses' opinions and experience (about) with Horta's theory and nursing process, and b) compare the current faculty's opinions about nursing process teaching with the faculty's opinions gathered in 1979. The sample consisted of 49 nursing faculty members and 43 nurses who worked at an hospital. The data were collected through a questionnaire. The findings showed that the Theory of Basic Human Needs proposed by Horta was the model most used in the nursing education and practice settings at the Federal University of Santa Catarina.