Healthcare context and nursing workforce in a main city of Angola.

BACKGROUND: Angola is one of the largest African countries with continuing levels of insecurity, considerable weakness in terms of respect for human rights, destroyed infrastructure and low transparency and social accountability levels. The health system displays gaps and nursing represents the main contingent among human resources in health. AIM: This research aims to understand the healthcare context in Angola from the perspective of Brazilian nurses who were involved in helping their Angolan colleagues. This general view of health services is followed by a description of nursing workforce particularities at a tertiary health service in the province of Luanda. METHODS: Data were extracted from the database of the Global Network of World Health Organization Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery Development, constructed based on technical visits to Angola in 2009. Information related to health service characteristics was used, focusing on nursing human resource activities at two tertiary, one secondary and one primary health institutions located in the province of Luanda. The study data were analysed through descriptive statistics. FINDINGS: Among the problems the nursing workforce faces, the lack of human, material and financial resources stands out, as well as insufficient professional qualification, excessive work journeys, low remunerations, non-valuation of professionals, leading to unsatisfactory work environments and discouraged human resources. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing in Angola is conquering its professional space. Therefore, regulatory policies are fundamental, defining the rights and obligations of all categories involved, with a view to determining nurses' function in the health team, including respect for and acknowledgement of their role in the community.

[Reactions and feelings of the nursing professional towards death]. / Reações e sentimentos do profissional de enfermagem diante da morte.

Through this paper which self explanatory and description we attempted to understand the reaction and feelings of nurses facing patients who are out of therapeutic possibility. W conducted individual, semi guided interviews with nine nurses from a general hospital in Maringá-PR about their reactions and feelings regarding forthcoming death on a daily base can be an extremely painful experience, therefore, they normally use self defense mechanics such as denial and reasoning death in order to live with daily losses. As a result these professional nurses may fail to notice the limits and their anxiety thus preventing them from providing a good quality of work in assisting their patients. Based on this fact we would like to suggest a prearranged space at the hospital where these health professionals could meet to share, reflect upon and express their anxieties, their fears, their helplessness and pain in face of death, enabling them to be better prepared for their daily losses.

[Performance of nursing students in the intramuscular administration of drugs]. / Desempenho discente de enfermagem na administração de terapêutica via intramuscular.

The goal of the present study was to compare the performance of two groups of nursing undergraduate students, submitted to two different teaching methods, in their ability to perform the intramuscular injection on clients needing the procedure. Both, control (CG) and experimental group (EG) (n = 35 each) were submitted to traditional method and instructional method respectively, according to the methodological procedure described by Nogueira (1995). The performance of the students was evaluated by a nurse who had no knowledge of the group each student belong. The nurse used the "check-list" in order to evaluate the performance of student. The results indicate that the time spent by the students of each group was approximately the same i.e. 9.4 min for CG and 9.3 for EG. The students of the control group showed ordinary performance (42.9%), good performance (48.9%) and very good performance (8.5%) whereas those of the EG showed ordinary performance (5.7%), good performance (60%) and very good performance (34.3%). The present results shows that the students are responsible by their own learning, motivating us to use new teaching methods on nursing undergraduate course.