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Nursing and its reliance on self-care: emancipatory investments or practices of submission?

The paper aimed at reflecting on the prevalence of self-care as a possible and desirable result of nursing education enterprises which focus on individual autonomy for one's own care. It can be argued that, in such a context, the teaching toward self-care has been directed according to technical orientations and biased definitions of "being healthy", of what it means to "be autonomous" and the meanings of "taking care of oneself". In this sense, taking into account the premises of health promotion, one questions the potential for self-care teaching to be liberating and to promote autonomy. One asks whether this could be more of a case of yet another investment on the submission of subjects than an action that promotes emancipation. The conclusion proposes "listening" as an alternative for minimizing the dilemmas produced in this context

Nursing; Self-care; Personal autonomy; Health education


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