Introduction Population aging, the prevalence of comorbidities, polypharmacy, dependence in activities of daily living, and the progressive impoverishment of many people, among other factors, have made frailty a public health concern. Implementing rehabilitation programs that can help manage or mitigate this problem is essential. Objective To analyze the perceptions of specialist nurses in rehabilitation nursing regarding rehabilitation programs for older adults with frailty. Methods We conducted a qualitative study within an interpretivist paradigm. Participants were 11 specialist nurses in rehabilitation nursing with professional experience implementing community-based rehabilitation programs for older adults with frailty. Participants completed written narratives, and we analyzed the data using content analysis following Bardin’s framework. Results The analysis identified strategies involving physical, cognitive, and social stimulation; empowerment; patient education and skills training; health education; mobilization; and enhancement of adaptive capacity. Exercise programs included motor and respiratory training, activities-of-daily-living training, swallowing training, and toileting training. Participants associated these programs with patient satisfaction, health promotion, prevention of complications, well-being, self-care, fewer hospital admissions, and lower health care costs. Conclusion Rehabilitation nurses recognized the importance of tailoring rehabilitation programs to older adults with frailty and reported perceived health benefits that they considered indicative of the quality of specialized rehabilitation nursing care.

This paper deals with part of a larger research project. It seeks to help to understand the roles and competencies of nurse educators, as nurses and educators, who possess wide-ranging knowledge, based on values that guide teaching professionalism. It deals with a study based on an inductive and in-depth analysis of contextually and temporally defined situations. In the ongoing methodological part of the study, an analytical framework was produced, using a qualitative approach. Data collection was carried out through semi-directed interviews with teachers who carry out duties at different levels of the training process of nurses: academic management posts, course coordination; supervision or cooperation in theoretical, theoretical practical and practical curricular units, as well as, involving the observation of teachers in action. Each participant is a case acting in contexts of the research. The analytical framework, in its present stage, consists of a check list of competencies, verified through interviews, observation and exposed to a European cultural modification in FINE workshops. Further consideration led to the drawing up of referential competencies for nurse educators.

The present article aims at presenting an analysis on the presence of power in the relation between the heath care professionals and the patients of a nephrology service. For this purpose, the conceptions regarding the categories and sub categories, already defined in the ongoing doctoral thesis (of the article’s author) of dedicated to the study of this relation, were used as the focus of the present study. This study adopted, as starting point, the growing importance of the bioétic principle of autonomy and (Beauchamp & Childress, 2002), and patients right to self-determination included in Patients’ Rights Charter. The study upon which this analysis is based, ongoing work of a doctoral thesis, has as central research question, to define which is the relational dynamic between heath care professionals and patients that best adequate to Health Care Quality Management and, at the same time, to the clinical and sociological reality. In the context of this analysis, the fenomenográfico methodology, in line with qualitative methodologies, was adopted for being considered the most adequate to the study of phenomena in which the aim is to identify the diversity of existing conceptions on those phenomena. As the methodology defends that the phenomena should be better understood if the several intervenient perspectives are taken into consideration, the most important intervenient in the heath care providing process, doctors, nurses and patients were used as informants. According to this principle, 12 patients, 5 doctors and 10 nurses of a nephrology service, where substitution therapies of the renal function are performed, were interviewed. According to the results the diversity of existing conceptions in each group, as well as between the different groups were mapped. Conceptually, this analysis was based on Focault ideas, namely on the study of the institutions where these relations of power are verified, including in these hospitals. The relations of power related to Knowledge and discipline are especially interesting, due to their presence in the contemporaneous culture (Machado, 1992) as giving the adequate support to structure the problematic under study. The power manifestations aspects are initiated, according to the heath care professionals’ terminology, with the “Catalogue” of the patients’. In this phase the differences of power between the three intervenient groups are evidenced, being also clear the existence of more power on the professional’s side. It is known and accepted that the patient is the knowledge/power receptacle of the professionals and that he must follow their recommendations, being also recognized the patient’s appropriation of the medical speech. The nurses are associated to a disciplinary power that is complemented with the surveillance and monitor of the patient’s body. In an initial moment, the doctors explore the power associated to their knowledge, considering themselves as the ideal people to solve all of the patient’s problems. The heath care professionals also explore and extend their powers in the family environment, being the informative process a veneration mean, using and sometimes abusing in persuasion strategies, instead of helping the patient self-determination.  Nevertheless, this relation resembles more to a collusion situation between professionals and patients then to domination strategies, in which the power may be considered productive. At this point we must highlight the health care professionals conscientiousness regarding their power’s utilization, to a point where they must question until where should they use that power and under which circumstances, bearing in mind the patient’s right to self-determination. Conscientious that the heath care providing service is not lined by the same rules used in other services providing areas, it should be underlined that the health care professionals are also citizens with an ethic code to attend, what not always facilitates the need to distinguish the professional’s and the patient’s power decision boundaries. What should not happen anymore is the almost exclusive use of the beneficence principle as orienting the heath care professionals’ action, under covering or ignoring the power existing in the relation during health care pratice.

The set of problems emerging from the current text try to answer two kinds of needs: first, to amplify the “research-action” concept to the new “research-action/training” concept; secondly, to demonstrate that the former extensiveness can be achieved through the creation of a methodological complementarity regimen between some research-action/training principles and other Grounded Theory typical procedures. Why must we consider the former preoccupations? Because the self-training characteristic of the Research-Action Process is too much intervenient concerning research decisions, even if many times we don’t have the exact notion of them, and because the researchers inferential practices subjectivity of their methodologies don’t allow correct interpretations of the reality. Taking into account the analysis of a research process in progress, we try to demonstrate: first, the one who is researching and performing establishes, not only to himself but also to the others who works with, a training process that interacts with the adequate interpretation of the reality; secondly, the data analysis hermeneutic techniques concerning the Grounded Theory methodologies lighten the former training processes and place the researchers closer to the effective reality.

This text about Mental Health in Estado Novo (Portuguese dictactorial regime in force from 1933-1974) is part of a study being developed by a UI:DE’s research team. It is an exploratory research about a psychiatric health law, presented and approved by government in 1945, after it had been anlysed by the Camara Corporativa and discussed in Assembleia Nacional (a legislative chamber). This law, Lei 2006, approved in April the 11th, 1945 was considered a progressive law, very well received, but not, totally implemented, mostly becaucse of a lack of financial resources even though other means were also not available as it was then explained in the periodic psychiatric press.

The importance of nursing records know days are recognised and considered essential to ensure continuity of care, emphasizing its function of reporting the issues resulting from the process of care. Nurses believe that persons are the target of their care, and so it is imperative to build a language in which the human element is clearly visible. But does this nursing language translate sensitivity and allows us clearly to identifies persons? This question emerged as a driving force for an exploratory and descriptive study, with a qualitative approach, and requests as a main objective to know the expression of a thought act throughout the human dimension of care, in the records of the evolution of nursing writing. There was the analysis of nursing evolution notes from two customers of each of the 18 departments in a 24 hours period, according to the analysis of Bardin contents. This study concluded that nurses recognize as a major purpose for these records to ensure the continuity of care, highlighting the technical and related interventions interdependent. The emotional and family relating aspects don’t have relative expression. The categories, but with fewer units for registration, related to the attention focused on the person who is involved in the process of care, the reference to their autonomy and capacity for decision, is out on writing their individuality and the presence of the nurse in this interaction to care and be careful.

All the scientific research is a human activity of great ethical responsibility because of the inherent characteristics. Since the selection of the problem until the publication of the results, the investigator has a long path to cross, and even the smallest “details” can have a major importance. The present article arises with one main objective: discuss some of these “details”, always with the finality of positively contribute to the development of nursing trough a better nursing investigation, where the competence, the respect of the dignity of the human being and the sense of responsibility shall be the presupposes of any work.

NOTA INTRODUTÓRIAComo distinguir uma teoria de um modelo? Cowan (2002), refere que um modelo é uma descrição simplificada de um sistema, isto é, um modo de descrever o que se faz e o que se pode fazer. Por outro lado, uma teoria é uma suposição ou um sistema de ideias baseado em princípios gerais que fornece uma explicação para algo. Numa outra perspectiva, um modelo representa a estruturação da realidade de uma disciplina, uma abstracção e uma concepção, uma forma de entender e de estruturar uma realidade dando-lhe sentido. As teorias decorrem dos modelos e são elaboradas consoante a óptica que se tem da ciência, fornecendo os conhecimentos necessários à construção de um saber e constituem expressões qualificadas que distinguem a área do saber, descrevendo, explicando e demonstrando (Adam, 1994). Não é finalidade deste artigo fazer uma descrição das várias teorias e modelos existentes na enfermagem para a (na) prática profissional, mas sim procurar reflectir sobre algumas questões que poderão surgir no decurso da educação advindo dos próprios docentes, profissionais ou estudantes. Iremos centrar-nos sobre algumas cogitações que são objecto de reflexão e questionamento constante quando se leccionam modelos conceptuais para a prática da enfermagem e, por outro lado, quando se apura o que se passa na prática da enfermagem. Será que se utilizam, integralmente, na prática os modelos conceptuais? Serão adaptações dos mesmos? Poderemos falar em “modelos ocultos” na prática da enfermagem? Onde se centra a prática, a formação e a investigação da enfermagem? Sobre estas e outras questões iremos debruçar-nos ao longo do artigo, não aspirando respostas inequívocas para as mesmas mas esperando, contudo, que as cogitações aqui expostas forneçam alguns contributos para reflexão sobre esta realidade.

Este artigo, breve, resulta de uma comunicação efectuada no IV Fórum Inter-Unidades de Investigação em Enfermagem: o que nos faz investigar, que decorreu no dia 30 de Maio de 2008 na Escola Superior de Enfermagem de Lisboa, Pólo Artur Ravara. Pretende-se, por um lado, sensibilizar os Enfermeiros para a necessidade, imperiosa, de realizarem investigação por forma a que cada vez mais se construa e consolide o conhecimento nesta área do saber, e por outro, alertar toda a comunidade científica de Enfermagem das possibilidades existentes em termos de financiamento disponível para investigação.

Das nove ilhas do Arquipelago dos Açores apenas em três delas existe um Hospital com cuidados especializados, nas restantes existem só Centros de Saúde. Quando as pessoas necessitam de cuidados de saúde para os quais não existe resposta na sua ilha são deslocadas para uma destas três ilhas ou para o continente português. Dada a insularidade, o transporte poderá ser realizado através de avião militar (em situações de emergência), avião ou barco (em situação comercial) e a duração da viagem pode variar entre 30 minutos e 3 horas. Este artigo constitui uma reflexão acerca da prática de Enfermagem (com alguns testemunhos de colegas), na qual se reflecte sobre como se efectivam cuidados de Enfermagem tendo por base a teoria do Cuidar de Swanson (1991) e sobre aspectos éticos e deontológicos com que se deparam os Enfermeiros, neste contexto, considerando o Código Deontológico dos Enfermeiros (Ordem dos Enfermeiros, 2005).