ABSTRACT
Objectives
To identify and analyze the discursive statements that characterizes the training of human resources in nursing in the 1940s by the Brazilian Red Cross.
Method
The approach of the documentary sources was through the assumptions of the Historical Method and they were questioned by using the thought of Michel Foucault.
Results
Historically, a peculiar model, the military teaching model, influenced the training of human resources in nursing, especially in the 1940s. The Brazilian Red Cross was linked to the Ministry of War and its nursing education had an emphasis on moral conduct, discipline, and respect for hierarchy, culminating in the production of nurses’ “docile bodies”. The attributes expected of nurses constituted the triad in the professional formation identity at that time: dedication, discipline and obedience.
Conclusion
The military model still reverberates practices in training of nurses in the present, as in the management, care and education in nursing.
Nursing; History of Nursing; Nursing Staff; Red Cross