Nursing in the media

Abstract

Elizabeth Mesquita Melo. Nurse. Ph.D in nursing, Federal University of Ceará/UFC. Professor at University of Fortaleza/UNIFOR. Nurse at São José de Doenças Infecciosas Hospital and Evandro Ayres de Moura Hospital. Fortaleza (CE), Brasil. E-mail: elizjornet@yahoo.com.br

Nursing emerges in a religious context as a volunteering exercised by lay people in order to meet the necessities of a population affected by wars and diseases. The role of the nursing professional until the beginning of modern age was merely to provide care actions as a selfless way to exercise the priesthood.

It was in the middle of the 18th century, with the emergence of Nursing Schools, that the nursing professional started a pathway of tireless search for knowledge, present until the present day.

It is worth highlighting that this evolution did not arise accompanied by the evolution of parlance and, therefore, the image of the nursing professional is usually distorted by the media of our country, which prevents the population from establishing differences pertaining to each category of nursing.

Every day, we witness the use of inexact concepts (not to say wrong) on the TV news, without mentioning novels that exert much influence on the population and that provide a misleading view of the function of the nursing professional, thereby making the society confound the duties of the different members of the team.

Even today, dictionaries continue to define nursing professional as the man or woman who cares for the sick people (Aurélio Dictionary). This simplistic vision certainly does not contribute to the clarification of a society that does not know the differences among the duties of the nursing assistant, the nursing technician and the nursing professional, thereby restricting these professionals to the role of taking care of hygiene and administering medications.

Some people still believe that the role of the nursing professional is to help the physician and do not realize that these two professionals develop differentiated activities, but that complement each other, in the pursuit of a common objective – the improvement of the patient under their care actions. It is emphasized that the role of the nursing professional is not only related to care actions, but also managerial. It is essential to disseminate the complex and dynamic work that he develops, by unfolding in managing care, supervising the quality of the work performed by the entire nursing team and also in conducting researches and participation in outreach projects together with the community.

Accordingly, we must appeal to the class organizations to preserve the integrity of the category. Entities such as COREN, ABEN or unions of nurses have the duty to protect the identity and uniqueness of our profession.