Care in the shaping of professional identity of the Spanish nursing sector

Abstract

The Spanish nursing sector repeatedly voices its discomfort due to its low social recognition despite the fact that different surveys show a high valuation of the profession by Spanish society. This apparent contradiction is interpretable from a process, which began in the 1970s, of reshaping the professional identity of the Spanish nursing profession as that of a care profession, compared to the auxiliary figure of medical practice that had preceded it. This process has contributed to transforming and giving prestige to the profession, but it has also had the unintended effect of reinforcing the image of nursing as a way of acting with tenacity, will, and dedicated self-denial rather than a profession dedicated to performing care tasks with a high degree of complexity and with which the population is cared for and cured.