The meaning of nursing 200 years after Nightingale - perceptions of professional practice in the intensivist context

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objectives: to know the meaning of contemporary nursing from the experience of intensive care nurses. Methods: qualitative research based on the theoretical framework of Symbolic Interactionism and the methodological framework of Interpretive Interactionism. The setting was a general hospital in Bahia, being carried out with 12 nurses working in intensive care for at least one year, through semi-structured interviews and drawing-text-theme technique, whose data were organized according to Miles and Huberman and analyzed upon the referential. Results: the sense of being a nurse was evidenced; a being for care, resulting from the experience in intensive care, capable of promoting the development of professional self-image, by causing, in nurses, other skills - besides the scientific ones, such as empathy, creativity, spirituality and compassion. Final Considerations: the sense of being a nurse, currently, expresses developments inherited from the Nightingalean proposal, but transcends the technical-managerial emphasis of this to a humanistic care perspective converging with our contemporary professional identity: a being for care.

Keywords

• Nursing
• Professional Practice
• Perception
• Intensive Care Units
• Empathy