[Nursing care management in hospital settings: the building of a construct]

The objective of this study was to build and present a theoretical definition of the concept of nursing care management in hospital settings, based on specific literature. We chose to use Concept Analysis strategies for building concepts, the rules of Archeological Analysis for forming concepts, and Lexical Analysis as the theoretical-methodological framework. The operationalization of the strategies and rules for forming the concept permitted the construction of the concept of nursing care in hospital settings. The constructed concept presented, by its nature, the capacity to form a dialectic integration of the aspects relative to the knowing-doing of care and management. The theoretical definition of the concept of Nursing Care Management in Hospital Settings assigned meaning to the term, in the initial context of the construction of a theory of Nursing Care Management in Health Services.