Skills-Based Education Archives - Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem

ABSTRACT

Objective:

To analyze how social representations of hospital and community care are structured in two groups of nursing students - 1^st and 4^th years.

Method:

Qualitative research oriented by the Theory of Social Representations. We used a questionnaire with Free Association of Words. Data were analyzed in the Software IRaMuTeQ 0.6 alpha 3.

Results:

We applied the method of Descending Hierarchical Classification and obtained four classes. Class 4 has the largest social representation (30.41%) within the corpus. The two organizational axes are nurse and disease/patient in the central core. On the periphery are the care and help related to the nurse and the treatment and prevention associated with the disease.

Conclusion:

Social representations focus on disease/patient and on the role of nurses in the treatment, prevention, and care. Health promotion and the social determinants of health are absent from the social representations of students.