Community health nursing from the perspective of systemic thinking

Abstract

The objective of this study is to understand the meaning of home visits in poor families to Brazilian nursing student from the perspective of systemic thinking. The Grounded Theory approach was used in this study. Data collection was performed between December 2017 and July 2018 through interviews with students and newly graduated nurses who are working in the Primary Health Care and carry out routine home visits. Three aspects arose from the results of the interviews: Feeling “tied hands”; Rethinking Attitudes and Practices and; Experiencing significant exchanges. The results of this study demonstrated that the nursing students experienced an intensive personal and professional (re)organization process, clearly evidenced in recurrent expressions, such as “I developed a professional attitude at the university, but among the poor families I developed personality”. The home visits in poor families from the perspective of systemic thinking are fundamental to nursing students because they can overcome the limits of scientific knowledge and change personal attitudes towards more solidarity and social protagonism.