[Nursing care: how nursing assistants perceive it]

This is a descriptive, exploratory study wih a qualitative approach performed in a University Hospital from the Federal Public Network of the city of Fortaleza, state of Ceará, Brazil. It aimed to understand how nursing assistants perceive nursing care and to know the actions performed by nurses that are recognized as care activities. Eight nurses from the surgical intensive care unit participated in the study. A questionnaire with open questions was used as an instrument of data collection. Analysis was performed through content analysis with the formation of thematic categories and a framework that allowed the best visualization of results. Results show that, although they know and conceptualize nursing care, nurses have difficulties in achieving the larger care, maybe because they are overloaded with technical procedures performed in hospital environments.