The meaning of nursing 200 years after Nightingale - perceptions of professional practice in the intensivist context

to know the meaning of contemporary nursing from the experience of intensive care nurses.

qualitative research based on the theoretical framework of Symbolic Interactionism and the methodological framework of Interpretive Interactionism. The setting was a general hospital in Bahia, being carried out with 12 nurses working in intensive care for at least one year, through semi-structured interviews and drawing-text-theme technique, whose data were organized according to Miles and Huberman and analyzed upon the referential.

the sense of being a nurse was evidenced; a being for care, resulting from the experience in intensive care, capable of promoting the development of professional self-image, by causing, in nurses, other skills - besides the scientific ones, such as empathy, creativity, spirituality and compassion.

the sense of being a nurse, currently, expresses developments inherited from the Nightingalean proposal, but transcends the technical-managerial emphasis of this to a humanistic care perspective converging with our contemporary professional identity: a being for care.