This qualitative study aimed to identify the nurses understanding about the health-disease process in the emergency assistance to drug users. The field research was carried out by means of semi-structured interviews with fourteen nurses. Data were analyzed following the assumptions of Hermeneutical Dialectic, giving rise to the category 'health-disease process in drugs'. Results showed that nurses understand the abuse of psychoactive substances as pathology, and focus on biomedical and moral models that disregard the many faces of the disease. It concludes that the theory of health-disease process is still associated with the model of multiple causes, constituting the main challenge to be overcome when a psychosocial model of attention is concerned.
Emergency services, psychiatric; Substance-related disorders; Health personnel; Health-disease process