Nursing education in Latin America: needs, trends and challenges

Abstract

This work was presented at the VII Iberoamerican Conference of Education in Nursing, held in Bogotá in 2003. The objective was to analyze the needs, tendencies and challenges of nursing trainig in Latin America given the reforms in health and education, the changes in the technological organization of work and the epidemiological and demographic patterns of the population in the region. In order to do this, a review was carried out of authors who are working on this theme using a critical view on the effects of neo-liberal policies and their effects on the expansion of higher education with a strong emphasis on the privatization of education. We consider education as part of the cultural heritage of the region marked by an enormous diversity and a strategy for social, cultural and economic inclusion of sectors of the population who have in the past been excluded from the consumption of goods and services produced in our countries. It presents the results of the World Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris in 2003, which showed the challenges for education in general and those that need to be considered in nursing. The article covers the theme of care as a central category for the organization of nursing training in the region, with the qualifying and giving responsability to nurses for the quality of health as a human right of all the population of the region. The article concludes by highlighting the defense of health as an ethical and political imperative for nursing as a tendency to think and practice a subject that applies to all the spheres of professional practice.

Key words: nursing training, health, health´s quality, trends in education