[Nursing and pre-hospital care: dead-ends and perspectives]

The present paper is about a reflection related to the emerging of Pre-Hospital Care in Brazil ant its respective models of care during the last few decades. By drawing out a basic historical trajectory we were able to point out the successful and dead end paths of this modality of health assistance in our country. The most recent attempts of standardization at a national level of this kind of service were analyzed, especially the Health Ministry Decree no. 2048/02, which constitutes itself as a starting point, offering subsidies to institutions and to those involved in this specific field of health knowledge, in order to remake the path within another perspective.