Challenges for nursing at the reach of primary health care goals

Abstract

The debate is based on the contextualization of the goals presented by the National Primary Health Care Plan (Plano Nacional de Atenção Básica), which despite having improved the quality and attempted to solve inequities and vulnerabilities, still has contradictions to overcome. The plan discusses that nursing, in this setting, is included as a member of the family health team and in the coordination of community health agents. The analysis of the challenges to be overcome was divided into three blocks: undergraduate teaching, the working process, and continuous training. The first block presents a panorama of undergraduates studies in Brazil and how the primary health care issues are addressed in the curricula and understood by faculty and students; the second examines the views that primary health care nurses have about their working process and the guidelines of the Brazilian National Health System; finally, the third block points to the challenges related to the different knowledge and practices that must be developed in nursing, in this specific area of practice.