[Public health nurses: a profession under construction]

In France, the Training Institutes for Nursing Care (IFSI) primarily prepare individuals for care providing occupations. Thus nurses practicing in the field of public health are non-practicing care providers since their recruitment is solely based upon the criteria of having a State Nursing Diploma (DE) at the end of their initial training. If one admits that public health is scattered and dispersed in France, then the situation for nurses is as much so and on many levels. Assignments only slightly formalised, and a lack of regulation and heterogeneous training compromise the legibility of this profession which nevertheless strongly exists in fact in practice. This remark is notably illustrated in the situation of DDASS and DRASS nurses. State bureaucrats, equipped with their one experience in care provision without any specific supplementary training, they work with the health administrators and the multidisciplinary teams to implement national public health policies. They are few, geographically and operationally isolated, and many of them follow training courses with are often restrictive in nature due to the fact that they take their personal time to do them. These are the main elements of the analysis of position announcements and different work being done within the professional network in the field, issued following a study conducted by the National Association of Public Health Nurses (ANIDESP) in 2002, and further enhanced by the conclusions of a seminar held in March 2003 at the Ministry of Health. The framework of a newly formed reference, missions in abeyance of formalisation and the establishment of a training programme, these are the main supporting points of the different proposals that the authors are making to the Health Directorate, and the Personnel and Budgeting Departments of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs.