Nursing and the modern nurse’s fight in Brazil – from ancilla medice to ancilla scientia

Abstract

This article comprises a reflection point on the discussion about the Brazilian Nursing's Reconceptualizacion, a Nursing Doctorate Thesis defended in EEAN/UFRJ, 2001, made up of a research into the historical perspective, over the period from 1960 to 1990. It approaches the nursing's post-modernization and the insertation of the nurse into the class institutions. Their roles in disclosuring and expanding the ideals and ideas produced in the researches and divulged by scientific magazines, as well as the political organization in the class Congress, housing a powerfull factor: one of consolidating new theoretical tendencies of thought in the nursing field. Fundamented on the analysis of nursing studies in the academic sphere, we analysed the tensions that characterize the scenario constituing the profession, on conquering outonomous space for its professional legitimacy.