Professional autonomy and nursing: representations of health professionals

To analyse the social representations of the professional autonomy of nurses and nursing for non-nursing health professionals. This is a qualitative study based on the theory of social representations. Fifty-three non-nursing professionals of a municipal hospital participated in this study. Data were collected between March and April 2015, from hierarchical free evocations using the inductor terms, "professional autonomy of nurses" and "nursing". The data were analysed using EVOC 2003. The most likely core of the social representation of professional autonomy were the terms care, team, and responsibility. Moreover, the likely core of nursing comprises the elements care, team, responsibility, and work. The professional autonomy of nurses and nursing consists of fairly close objects of representation in the studied group, which makes them non-autonomous representations that are still sensitive to the incorporation of new elements.