THE NURSE’S EVALUATIVE COMPETENCE FOR RECOGNIZING AND FACING THEFAMILIES’ HEALTH NEEDS

Abstract

This exploratory descriptive study, anchored in the Theory of Praxis Intervention of Nursing in Collective Health, aimed to identify the nurse’s evaluative competence for recognizing and facing the families’ health needs. The study took place in a Health District in the capital of the state of Paraná, the data was collected from primary and secondary sources in the period June 2008 – July 2009, and the participants in the research were 25 nurses from Health Centers. The results indicate that the nurse recognizes determinant processes of the health needs and of the health-illness process in the different dimensions of the context – singular, particular, and structural, but that in intervening she does not relate them, and thus directs her actions to the singular dimension. In the final considerations, the challenges indicated are in the sense of training the professionals to promote interventions which seek to turn back the determinant processes of the health needs of the users of the local health services.

Keywords

• Professional competence
• Nurses
• Public health
• Primary health care