[Rethinking nursing education and investing in persons: various contributions to the gestalt approach]

Despite the widespread emphasis on human wholeness, the training of health professionals has privileged technical competence, desconsidering the need to strengthen the person's process of inner growth. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the importance of a person's development as a basic tool of one's own work. The authors consider that there is no way to separate the personal from the professional dimension since each person interacts as a totality. Thus, the person exists in the professional Being or, dialectically speaking, the professional integrates the human being that it really is. These considerations, which are fundamental to each one's development, usually are not part of one's life, personal or professional learning. It is necessary to make this an essential part of nursing training, broadening the possibilities of integrating and transcending either side of the person, by introducing an holistic approach which contemplates the human being development in an integral and integrated way.