Narrativas de egressas portuguesas de um Mestrado Profissional em Enfermagem de Saúde Familiar

Abstract

Introduction. This paper presente the results of a study with female nurses graduating from a professional master's degree course in Family Health Nursing in Portugal. Objective. The aim of this research was to analyze the contribution of the course in the professional practice of nurses in primary and hospital health services. Methods. A questionnaire and interviews were used with ten nurses working in health care services in Portugal. Bardin's Content Analysis method was used through categorical analysis, with the help of the WebQDA software to organize and coding the data from the narratives. Results and discussion. Based on the three categories analysed, namely: i) master's contributions to health services; ii) misunderstandings of the professional master's degree and iii) master's degree as a space for knowledge, limits and possibilities are discussed of the professional master's degree, highlighting the relevance of the evaluation of processes for institutional development. Thus, both in the interview and in the questionnaire, it was possible to identify the master's degree as a space for knowledge, not only for the acquisition of knowledge, but to make transformations in the working spaces of the graduates. Conclusions. Although the satisfaction of the graduates with the course was evidenced, the study identified difficulties in the narratives in terms of support for the development of the research without the need of a dispensation of time in the services. It was evident the knowledge acquired in the course, related to their application and the change in professional and personal performance, in terms of theoretical knowledge, technical skills of these graduates in the workplace.