[Focusing the administrative exercise within the whole of nursing functions]

Within the hospital context, the nurse cannot avoid the administrative function, even though this is a controversial issue in Brazilian nursing. To focus on the problem, in the present study we set out to identify the set of functions of nurses working on the admission floors and to determine the distribution of administrative functions according to their bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic characteristics. The data were collected at four admission units by intermittent observation of work performed by nurses in 1985. The following set of functions were identified: administration (62.5%), patient assistance (19.2%), teaching and research (3.8%), functions that could be delegated to others (6.8%) and personal (7.6%). The administrative functions were classified into bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic with a respective distribution of 77% and 23%. The study indicates that the administrative function is one of the elements defining the nurse's profile, even though the authors believe that this function should be better oriented.