The professional nurse and the handicapped children.

Abstract

The present paper represents an attempt to learn more about the behavior and concepts of the qualified nurse working in a quite specific area of his/her profession: with handicapped children. The main issue concerning this work could be summarized this way: what are the learning necessities of the qualified nurse so as to deal with handicapped children, based on his/her experience and actual professional practice and the reality he/she belongs to? Thus, the work based itself specially on the statements of those professionals, gathered by means of interviews. From this procedure, the proposition of eight thematic items was made possible, and on theese itens a qualification programme for nurses to work with handicapped people was fundamented, particularly children, based on a given regional reality.