Nursing as profession: Searching new questions

During their evolutionary development, nursing has been considered as an occupational activity based on a vocation for a public purpose and whose role has become central in modern health organisations. But above all, nurses' efforts have been focused on a prerogative of full professional status. Such prerogative construction, however, seems to rest on structural concerns alone, instead of functional concerns. By this is meant, the question seems to head into how nursing is structured to undertake its work, instead of how nursing interacts with the rest of the occupational system with which it has reciprocal relationships. This paper highlights the necessity of a conceptual framework that provides a theoretical proposal to support nursing development from a comprehensive and systemic approach.