[The process of socialization of nurses at an intensive care center]

The objective of this study was to understand the process of socialization of the new professionals that are part of the subculture of an intensive care unit (ICU). Considering that the ICU is a subculture of the hospital, and that the professionals share symbols and meanings that were developed through social interactions in the context of Intensive Care the symbolic interacionism and the ethnographic description were used as a theoretical and methodological basis for this study. The participant observation, the ethnographic interview and the documented analysis were used to understand the process of internalization of the symbolic universe of the ICU. The results showed that in the socialization process quality values, discipline, commitment, sense of unit, rules and organizational values were reproduced. This process is permeated with feelings of insecurity, anxiety, distress, incompetence and fear. The causes for these feelings have a strong component in the previous nonexistence and in the gap of professional career. This process occurs in a formal and informal way but is always referred as difficult, lonely and sometimes shared.