Nursing training and their approximation to the assumptions of the national curriculum guidelines and primary health care

Abstract

This article describes the characteristics of offer for job vacancies, curricular structure and competency profile of students from nursing undergraduate courses, seeking to identify elements that are in line with the assumptions of the National Curricular Guidelines (NCG) and of the nurses’ work in primary health care. Applying a computer-assisted survey by telephone interviews with 94 course coordinators, it was verified: provision of job vacancies distant from the national needs; curricular structure focused on fragmented disciplines in the basic and vocational cycles, in disagreement with recommendations by the NCG; and competency profile potent for the development of actions of promotion, prevention, management and nursing techniques, which are predicted in the scope of general skills and abilities recommended for the exercise of the general-ist professional nursing practice, according to the NCG, and compatible with the main demands of primary health care.