EDITORIAL
The theme for this edition Doing research in health and nursing is a tribute to its important contribution to the Nursing profession as a science, technology, and innovation.
Research in health and nursing has marked and continues to grow within the qualification of the investigative process, in the increment of financial investment, and in the policies of advancement and strengthening of the profession, among other reasons. Nursing when recognized as a science, a university-level profession, and with the initiation of the formation of master's in the 1970s and 1980s, has gradually consolidated its specificities and diversities, articulated and integrating knowledge with other determined sectors of life and health care.
The insertion of Nursing as an area of knowledge in the CNPq (Brazilian National Council of Research) occurred in 1986, when the first Doctor's of Philosophy in Nursing were appointed. Today, we commemorate the creation of an exclusive Assessors Committee CA-AF, today consolidated as a specific area of knowledge production. The dominion of knowledge of the theoretical-philosophical, as well as epistemological bases that sustain Nursing as a science, technology, innovation; and the political competence of the profession in conquering the necessary space and recognition among the national and international scenarios is part of the profile of the most qualified researchers.
Currently, there are twenty-eight (28) accredited (by CAPES) Post-Graduate Programs in Nursing in Brazil. From these, twelve (12) include the doctorate level and eleven (11) of these also count on the academic master's level. Another fifteen (15) Programs contain only the academic master's level, with one program dealing exclusively with the professional master's level. In order to provide an education which is more qualified in research, the investigative production process is organized into research groups. The CNPq has registered, two-hundred eighty (280) research groups in its Research Directory. The activities of these research groups centered upon lines of research have made possible advances in the quality of the undergraduate, master's, and doctorate students of the area. They have also improved the qualitative and quantitative work in the production of knowledge.
The increase in the number of Programs and the consequent volume and quality of publications has strengthened the profession's recognition. It has helped to make greater conquests possible in the political scenario of the financial organizations, the demand for student scholarships for master's, doctorate, post-doctorate, split-doctorate degrees, and scientific initiation projects for undergraduate students, as well as other assistance.
The investigative practice through these research centers and research groups has become more and more integrated among the different levels of education and among the professionals in their professional practice. This has shown to be the case not only in learning institutions, but also as they have arisen in health care institutions.
The impact of what we produce and the needs in perceptive knowledge indicates the need to express the priorities in health care, to generate technological products that provide a more incisive response to the improvement of the quality of life, and even in the innovation that offers more expressive economic return. The economic and social benefits of produced and applied knowledge in nursing practice is still a challenge for our researchers who generate investigative practices.
Health care problems point out the need for a practice that qualifies life, committed to the search for knowledge in order to give a response to our needs and interrogations. It is important to amplify the aptitude of contextualizing and globalizing knowledge, as well as transcending differences and peculiarities in overcoming the disciplinary frontiers in different amplitudes for political-social attitudes in the sum of all efforts towards greater conquests. This knowledge is co-responsible and in demand for their work in collective research in the area of health care.
Knowledge production in health care advances with support from the lenses of interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, and complexity. It offers significant earnings or returns to the social needs of its internal, regional, national, and even international impacts.
Nursing as a specific field of knowledge and as a social profession is headed in the direction of a new era for science and technology. One questions one's self: what perspectives are open to the possibilities for scientific and technological knowledge construction within a more responsible and unified social commitment to more dignified and healthier living.
The need for knowledge production in Nursing for national and intenrational visibility, recognition and consolidation of Post-Graduate, Graduate, and Professional courses requires the scientific and technological advance in the area that requires competent researchers, as well as an ample national research policy. The internationalization of Brazilian Nursing is the fruit of regional strengths. The sum of regional efforts, the determination to achieve goals, new strategies which increment discoveries, and the creation and construction of knowledge has been a social practice which challenges and generates expectations.
In this edition, the reader will enjoy new knowledge within the theme of research in nursing and health care, within the diverse emphases and modalities of study. Some are more conclusive, others more reflective and critical. Others are more instigating and open to new possibilities for construction. The procedural nature of knowledge production has shown to be dynamic, constructive, unended, and inconclusive. It includes different logics, views of the world, modes or methods, and ideological incorporations. It navigates through different looks and focuses or facets that instigate the curiosity and the pleasure of exercising this eminently intellectual, contextual, and collective social practice.
Dra. Alacoque Lorenzini Erdmann
Representative of the Area of Nursing of the CNPq and Adjunct Coordinator in the Area of Nursing in Capes. CNPq 1A Researcher. Tenured Professor at UFSC
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
12 Nov 2007 -
Date of issue
Dec 2006
