The aesthetics of smells: the sense of smell and nursing.

This study aims to present reflections on the meaning of olfactory sensations and perceptions, as well as their relevance as a phenomenon present in Nursing practice. It stresses the importance of the smells' chemical language in the hospital environment, emphasizing some deductions about the aesthetics of smells from the Nursing perspective. The authors conclude that a deeper aesthetic/philosophical and technical/scientific comprehension of smell emanations will contribute to human care, especially in Nursing diagnoses and prescriptions, environmental quality regulation and therapeutics.

[Where (and how) do we find quality in the hospital nursing service?].

Based on literature, one tries rescuing what is approached in the issues regarding the quality of the nursing care and rendering visible some of the spaces that have long been occupied by the nursing professionals as well as other spaces which are currently feasible to be occupied. The discussion focuses a case experienced by subjects who look for health care before the presuppositions that comprise the issue of health right. From this situation, one goes through Florence and reaches the 3-level requirements from the Credentials National Organization, followed by a questioning about the continuity or the rupture of a scenario of regulating informal actions of the alleged quality, distinguished by the presuppositions elected for this reflection.

[Multiple issues researched and to research in nursing].

The present study aims at analyzing topics of master's thesis and doctoral dissertations submitted to nursing graduate programs in Brazil from 1998 to 2000. The sample comprised abstracts of 337 thesis and 153 dissertations that were analyzed based on scheme category proposed by Carvalho (2000) to group nursing graduate scientific production. Results evidenced that research carried out addressed a great range of themes, comprehending all research lines of the three areas of the referred scheme.