Nurses' Clinical Practice in Primary Care: a Process Under Construction

This study aims to present the re-signification process of the meanings of nurses' clinical practice in primary care from the perspective of extended clinic and permanent education. An intervention research was carried out with the approval of an ethics committee. Nine nurses participated in reflection groups from September to December 2008 in Ribeirao Preto-SP-Brazil. The redefinition process of the meanings proposed by the institutional analysis was mapped. The results point out that the nurses perceive differences in clinical work, by acknowledging the sense of user-centered clinical practice; daily limits and tensions and the need for support from managers and the team to deal with users' problems and situations. They identify the necessity to open space in the schedule to do that. It was concluded that nurses' clinical practice is being consolidated, and that collective analysis processes permit learning and the reconstruction of practices.