Brazilian nursing history on the shoulders of giants.

BACKGROUND: This study describes the route followed by nursing in Brazil, through the foundation of nursing organizations and the emergence of nursing leaders and pioneers. AIM: To present the origins of modern nursing in Brazil, identifying the main nurse-leaders and analysing their performance for the creation and consolidation of the nursing organizations. METHODS: It is a historical and social study with descriptive approach, to describe the process of Brazilian nursing professionalization and leadership through a literature review. RESULTS: The oldest nursing organization is the Brazilian Nursing Association that holds scientific and cultural activities. There are also nurses' unions and nursing specialty associations, such as the Brazilian Academy for the History of Nursing, and the Federal Nursing Council. The latter has compulsory membership for controlling nursing services according to the qualifications of the personnel. The very first school for nurses in the Nightingale system was created in São Paulo, 1894, at the Samaritan Hospital, and by the government in 1923, in Rio de Janeiro, for which American nurses, led by Ethel Parsons, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, were essential for the creation of the Anna Nery Nursing School, still in operation within a federal university. Some nurses pioneered these works such as Edith Fraenkel, Maria Rosa Pinheiro, Amalia Carvalho and others. CONCLUSION: The work done by nursing leaders has brought to the profession a better status and made it more recognized by the society.

[Nursing: idealism and realism. Perspectives of nursing students on the nursing profession]. / Enfermagem: idealismo x realismo. Perspectivas de formandos do curso de graduação de enfermagem sobre a profissão de enfermagem.

Exploratory and descriptive study with the following objectives: to identify the nursing students' feelings related to the undergraduate course and their perception towards the nursing profession. After the four-year course, 57.4% of students perceived nursing in a positive way as a profession for the future, valued, recognised, compensating even with some limitations. However, 25% of students still perceived nursing as a mechanical, manual and sacrificed profession, with a limited scientific vision and with a gap between theory and practice and as a consequence a lower recognition by the society. If current trends are maintained, the nurse's value would be much greater in the next decades within the Brazilian society according to 61% of respondents.

[History of the legislation for the nursing profession in Brazil]. / História da legislação do exercício da enfermagem no Brasil.

This article outlines the contribution of the Brazilian Association of Nursing (ABEn) in the study, discussion and approval of laws and regulations that have significant impact on the nursing profession. It points out that ABEn has always had an active, pacific and accurate way of working. It emphasizes that the association has dealt with de law making-body and executive members of the government, based on technical arguments and secondary data in order to comply with the nursing professional's needs.

[The year 2030: dawn of the millennium of the profession: nursing--a prospective view of nursing undergraduate students]. / Ano 2030--a aurora da profissão do milênio: enfermagem--uma visão prospectiva de estudantes de graduação de enfermagem.

Study based on testament-letters written by freshmen students of the undergraduate course in Nursing, who should imagine to be in the year 2030. Everything imagined by these students and that might have happened in the three earlier decades was the subject of this study, such as professional and nurses achievements, outbreak of cure for illnesses, social prestige and positions.

[The process of making laws]. / Sobre a elaboração das normas jurídicas.

This paper presents a simplified summary of the process to make laws. It starts from the juridical concepts, requirements needed, hierarchy of the Brazilian laws, the need to follow proper steps through channels and committees within the National Congress, quorum required until its final approval with the presidential sanction, when a project of law becomes an enacted law. The purpose is to help nurses and other interested people to participate in the development of their profession through laws which better fulfill the professional interests of the group.

Professional nursing in Brazil.

Modern nursing in Brazil started in 1923 with the creation of a School of Nursing, whose first graduates became the country's nursing's pioneers. They founded the Brazilian Nursing Association three years after graduation, and since then practically every achievement by the nursing profession is a result or a consequence of their active work.

Mental health nursing: a global perspective.

This paper is based on a presentation by Dr Oguisso to the First Hamburg World Forum on Mental Health, 11 June 1994, for the Standing Committee of Presidents of International Non-Governmental Organizations Concerned with Mental Health Issues. Over recent years, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) has been concerned that health providers are sometimes not adequately prepared to give quality care and that resources are often well below those targeted for other sectors of the health care system. In 1991 the ICN chose 'Mental Health--Nurses in Action' as the theme for International Nurses Day on 12 May. With the help of the ICN-provided educational kits, national nurses' associations updated nurses on the problems and informed the public that nurses as a group can provide many of the mental health services to people and answer their families needs.

[Collaborating for the development of nursing in Africa]. / Colaborando para o desenvolvimento da enfermagem na Africa.

The support offered by the ICN to the african countries of portuguese language, is described in this paper. The countries that participated of the ICN' Project were Angola, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Moçambique, São Tomé and Principe. The purposes of the project are: analyse development of nursing in these countries; identify the needs of the nurses of the these countries; to evaluate the health systems and work to introduce the nurse in these systems; to identify the strughts and issues of the nursing associations; to promote the relationship among nurses and to establish plan to reinforce the national Nursing Association. We don't think that nursing is ready and well structured now, but this Project will be the first step in this direction. We have results an had some example of this is affiliation to the ICN of some African countries that have been made.

How ICN is promoting research.

"No Health Without Research." That's the conclusion of the 43rd World Health Assembly technical discussions in May and ICN's warning since the early '70s when it began to promote nursing research in earnest. But ICN's commitment to research is not recent. It is deeply embedded in its first constitution in 1900. Below, a review of ICN's special role in supporting research, excerpted from Taka Oguisso's introductory speech to the Task Force on International Research meeting in May (page 287).

[Profile of the nurse in the outpatient units of INAMPS in Brazil. O Instituto Nacional de Assistência Médica da Previdência Social]. / Perfil do enfermeiro de unidades ambulatoriais do INAMPS no Brasil.

The objective of this study was to outline a profile of the nurses working within the INAMPS (National Health Service) outpatients centers in Brasil. Its purpose was to offer some assistance on the understanding of the subject, to the nursing educational system, to the employers of the product of that system, to the nurses' associations and to the nurses themselves. In the pursue of the objective, the author depicted: personal and professional traits of the nurses; job satisfaction and perceived support from the administration; the most frequent nurses activities performed. It also established the relations between nurses traits, job satisfaction, perceived support, and activities performed. Data was collected from March to December 1984. The questionnaires were sent to the universe of working nurses in the outpatient centers--1158 nurses. 927 (80.1%) answers were obtained. The population studied represented: 94.3% female, majority married; 30 to 40 years old, year of graduation and year of admission in the INAMPS in the 70's. Gross results were: job satisfaction 83.6%, perception of support from administration 75.2%, prepared as specialists 71.3%, and frequence to continuing educational programs 84.1%. Mains activities performed by nurses in decreasing order: supervision of nursing personnel 39.3%, direct nursing care 36.7%, teaching of patients and families 21.7%, administrative--functions 17.9%, and inservice training of personnel 3.6%. No relation was demonstrated between graduate preparation and job satisfaction nor perceived support from administration. Positive relation was found between educative activities and job satisfaction, and between supervision of nursing personnel or performance of administrative functions and perception of support from the administration.