[Nursing: the reality and future in care and management]

The authors discuss the activities developed by Nursing in two general orientations: the assistance and the management, concerning the concrete work and its perspectives. Therefore, they engage in polemics around the administrative versus assistance functions and attract the attention to the impossibility of thinking the nursing work inarticulated of different health practices, as a whole they accomplish each other in attempting the necessities of health of the population in a social level.