In this special edition, we celebrate 90 years of the Brazilian Nursing Association (ABEn), at the same time in which we celebrate the creation and maintenance of the first scientific nursing journal in Brazil. Emerging in 1932, it has shone a light on the production of knowledge and the constitution of nursing in Brazil today.
As the head organization for Brazilian nursing, ABEn has led important fights in favor of quality health care for the population, in addition to driving the establishment of nursing in the country. Throughout its existence it has coordinated with other Brazilian nursing organizations to promote the political, social and scientific development of its professionals. The entity maintains volunteer work as a principle and democracy as its vital tenet. Politically, it lies on the pillars of nursing education, scientific research and nursing practice as a form of social work, essential to social services and health, and to the organization and the functioning of health services.
Since its creation, ABEn has dedicated itself to championing nursing education at all levels, regulating the profession, and defending health service users as the representative of nursing associates within social control, in policy-making commissions and committees in the fields of health, education, and human rights.
Today, ABEn is made up of sectional and regional bodies and its organization depends on the dynamics of each of its parts. This setup makes it possible for the national ABEn to be recognized by schools, national and international government organizations, health services, user organizations, and other professional organizations. Its role as a leadership is prominent, due to its history of fighting for such causes.
In this thematic and celebratory edition of the Brazilian Journal of Nursing we could not help but exalt the importance of themes related to care and its principles. We believe in the essence of nursing care and in the profession with a leadership role in care provision, as a means for promoting health and dignified living. Therefore, the process of healthy living requires promoting human beings and believing in one another, believing in the potential of humans and our continuing personal development. However, we need to strengthen our potential for leadership as nurses, students, professors, and researchers when caring for the lives of others and caring for our own lives.
The importance of care as an instrument for promotion implies nurses act as mediators, facilitators, guides and guardians. We must be proactive and decisive to be able to promote accessible, systematic, ongoing, fair and valuable care.
To this end, we need dignified working conditions, adequate work hours, proper minimum wages; we need a new career plan in public service, we need a ratio of nursing personnel per population that favors health and nursing care access and coverage. Additionally, the essentiality of nursing to health care needs to be recognized, and its demands related to working conditions and adequate and lifelong education must be understood as an indispensable part of providing safe and quality care to the population.
Care in nursing also means caring for how we organize ourselves, care for our professional organizations and above all, care for the entities that represent us. Strengthening our entities is a responsibility that must be taken on by all nursing professionals, schools, and services, for as we know, it is not an easy fight and it requires unity.
The articles published in this edition also provide a reflection about nursing practice in the sense of providing the instruments for improving the principles of care, which is always necessary. This reflection is encompassed here through innovative studies, based on theoretical and technological frameworks together with educational, care, administrative and research practices.
We hope that by the end of one more ABEn administration we will have been able to achieve the purposes of our entity, through the exercise of freedom, and a frank and transparent relationship with our associates. We especially hope to have honored the mission of REBEn, which is to disseminate scientific production from different fields of knowledge that are of interest to nursing, expressing the Brazilian Nursing Association's political project.
I would like to thank all of the authors who sent their work to be published in this special edition. Thanks to the Director of the National ABEn Social Communication and Publication Center - Maria Márcia Bachion, and editors in chief Rosa Maria Godoy Serpa da Fonseca and Dulce Aparecida Barbosa. Readers, I wish that you can extract the best of this edition to be and practice nursing!
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Nov-Dec 2016
