Nursing in Brazil a critical-holistic perspective.

Global and local insecurities influence the Brazilian health care system and the complexities of the healthcare workforce. Nursing in Brazil is shaped by socio-political and historical factors. This paper conceptualizes nursing as a social practice and uses Wright's (2000) "Critical-Holistic Paradigm for an Interdependent World" as a guide framework to analyze how nursing education and professional practice exist within the country's socio-economic and political reality while being constructed within the domains of science and technology.

[Therapeutic pathway of hospital emergency services users].

This is an exploratory study conducted in a general hospital in the greater Florianopolis in Santa Catarina State, Brazil using a qualitative/quantitative approach. The main objective is to describe the therapeutic route of patients seeking health assistance in an emergency hospital and their justifications for this choice, discussing it primarily from a socio-political and cultural point of view, without the intention to adhere to the theoretical philosophical aspects of these theories. The sample was composed of 35 subjects.

[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.

[The Brazilian Nursing Political Professional Project and the Aben-Paraná presidents between 1980 and 2001].

Historicizing the development of the Brazilian Nursing Political-Professional Project (PPPEB), at the Brazilian Nursing Association-Parana Division (ABEn-PR), under the optical overview of the ex-presidents during the years 1980 and 2001, identifying future action perspectives. Data information was collected with interviews and documental research with seven ex-presidents. Concluding that the PPPEB directives, directed the researched management actions.

[Building a new form for professional organization--a challeng for the "Political-Professional Project of Brazilian Nursing"].

This article is a reflection about the form of Brazilian nursing professional organization, highlighting the limits of the current model and the challenges for the future. It is based on the authors' analysis of an important social movement of Brazilian Nursing, the "Participation Movement" that took place from 1980 to 1990. This Movement has promoted a reflection about nursing work and organization and about nursing participation in the country's re-democratization, as well as defending the right to health.

[Auditing the nursing care methodology].

This study it describes the development of a process of audit of the Method of Assistance of Nursing in a unit of internment of a University Hospital. Identified the standards, the instrument was elaborated, under the form of indicators, in which had been examined, random, five handbooks with examination of the user "in loco". The data had been to add and classified in a quanti-qualification of the assistance of Nursing.

[Psychiatry reform: analysis of power relations in mental health care services].

This paper approaches the topic of Psychiatric Care Reform in Brazil and, particularly, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, as well as the role played by a disciplinary power in modern society. We believe that in spite of the implementation of a reform in Psychiatric care and the growing progress in the legislation aimed at protecting psychiatric patients, such individuals are still the objects and the instruments inside relationships of disciplinary power. This study is based on Michel Foucalt's works, especially on his analysis of the power relationships, in order to elicit answers to our main question, to support the thesis we formulated, and to reach our goal, which is to ponder on the discrepancy we perceive between legal victories and the new speech delivered by the psychiatric care reformers, and on a practice which seems to deny emancipation to psychiatric sufferers, that is, deny their citizenship.