Nursing consultation in child care: the experience of nurses in the Family Health Strategy

The objective of this study was to understand the meaning that the nurses working in the Family Health Strategy assign to the nursing consultation in child care. The theoretical framework was Symbolic Interactionism, and the methodological was the Grounded Theory. Data collection was performed with seven nurses by means of a semi-structured interview and participant observation. The comparative data analysis identified the conceptual category: Promoting individual and collective changes by means of comprehensive care. It was found that nurses value the nursing consultation in child care, they consider it important and acknowledge its potential to promote significant comprehensive changes regarding children, their families, and in the context of the community, in the preventive as well as in the curative aspect, and thus they feel fulfilled. Nevertheless, nurses deal with personal and structural difficulties, and are affected by the beliefs, values and social conditions of the assisted population, and, therefore, recognize they need better preparation to perform this activity.