[The diagnostic process and how to teach it]

The subject of the present study is the teaching of the ability of diagnosing to nursing students. It has the general objective of verifying the adequacy of the elaboration of the analysis and synthesis process and its relation to the establishment of nursing diagnosis. After the development of the programmatic content of the Medical Nursing Discipline, students individually elaborated, facing a hypothetic situation, the diagnosis process (RISNER, 1986), obtaining a total of 106 diagnosis formulations (Taxonomy I of North American Nursing Diagnosis Association). The major difficulties were in the areas of "the establishment of relations and "data clustering". Authors suggest the stimulation of the development of the process of thinking inherent to analysis and synthesis since the beginning of undergraduate course.