Social representations of nursing students about hospital assistance and primary health care

ABSTRACT

Objective:

To analyze how social representations of hospital and community care are structured in two groups of nursing students - 1^st and 4^th years.

Method:

Qualitative research oriented by the Theory of Social Representations. We used a questionnaire with Free Association of Words. Data were analyzed in the Software IRaMuTeQ 0.6 alpha 3.

Results:

We applied the method of Descending Hierarchical Classification and obtained four classes. Class 4 has the largest social representation (30.41%) within the corpus. The two organizational axes are nurse and disease/patient in the central core. On the periphery are the care and help related to the nurse and the treatment and prevention associated with the disease.

Conclusion:

Social representations focus on disease/patient and on the role of nurses in the treatment, prevention, and care. Health promotion and the social determinants of health are absent from the social representations of students.

Key words:
Nursing Students; Nursing Education; Hospital Assistance; Primary Health Care; Skills-Based Education