In their professional practice, nurses are concentrated on administrative functions, thus taking distance from direct patient care. The articulation of these functions is difficult, perhaps due to the lack of preparation among nurses and the disjointed way in which teaching institutions deal with these contents and establish a relation with daily work practice. This descriptive study takes the form of an "opinion poll", aimed at finding out people's opinions about a certain issue. We carried out interviews with graduating nursing students (2002) who had not entered professional practice yet, with a view to verifying their opinion on management activities of clinical nurses and how they evaluate the knowledge about management issues acquired during the course. Results demonstrate that a dichotomy between nursing care and management is present in the labor market as well as in professional formation.
Nursing; Management; Professional practice location