The subject is the construction of the nurse's professional identity, in three moments, understood as passages through a mirror: the periods before the university entrance; during the university studies; and after graduation. A qualitative approach was used and Scenes of Aesthetic Production was used as a methodological strategy for data production. The analysis was based on multi-referentiality and on social representations. The passage through the 1st mirror is "The death of the teenage dream"; the 2nd mirror, "The construction of the resistance identity"; the 3rd mirror, "The construction of the project identity". We came to the conclusion that construction of the professional identity of the nurse is a dynamic process that is in the process of shifting emphasis to identification with the self, the intersubjectivity of the human action, as a function of social well-being, liberty of expression, and the preservation of environmental equilibrium.
Nursing; Career choice; Culture