Kruse MHL, Duarte AS, Dornelles CS, Lauer RD. The arrival of American nurses in Brazil: 100 years of nursing training (1923-2023). Interface (Botucatu). 2025; 29: e240033. Doi: https://doi.rg/10.1590/interface.240033
Abstract
This essay analyzes the arrival of American nurses in Brazil, which gave rise to ways of teaching and learning, establishing nursing as a profession in the country. The essay draws on Michel Foucault’s genealogical method to examine the conditions of possibility of these events. We provide an outline of the underlying political, economic and social conditions at the inception of the profession. Nurses are viewed as a subject disciplined to regulate the population, based on rituals, obligations, rights and procedures, legitimizing these professionals as agents of biopolitics. Conditions of possibility include Anglo-American and religious influence, organization and supervision by doctors, hospital training, disregard for the specificities of work in the country and the emergence of the profession as a health reform strategy developed during a pandemic, which are aspects that mark nursing training and the organization of the profession in Brazil to this day.
Keywords
Teaching; Nursing; History of nursing; Biopower; Biopolitics
Access in: https://doi.rg/10.1590/interface.240033
