[Competence in nursing and its significance for professionalization]

The occupation of nursing is in an advanced stage of change. Demands for autonomy are manifest in the attempt to make nursing scientific. This results in raising the question, among others, of defining what it is about competence which makes it possible to call nursing a profession. Looking at developmental models, at the theory of socialisation one finds, typical of professions, congruence of head, heart and hand (cognitive, moral-communicative and pragmatic competence). An attempt is made to demonstrate that moral competence has the most important place because justice and caring form the nucleus of nursing models, within a framework of advocatorial ethics. Nursing loses its purpose if it is dominated by rationale of outcome and by the pragmatism of routine action. Professionalisation of nursing can make progress if research can provide valid arguments for autonomy, based on the competence paradigm described here.