TECHNICAL NURSING EDUCATION: REFLECTIONS ON CURRICULUM, SUPERVISED PRACTICE AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Abstract

This article analyzes the construction of professional identity among nursing technicians based on their educational process, with emphasis on the relationship between curriculum and supervised practice. It is a narrative literature review with an exploratory and analytical-reflective approach, complemented by normative document analysis. The bibliographic search was conducted in SciELO, CAPES Journals, and the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), with support from Google Scholar, covering the period from 1999 to 2024, resulting in the selection of 25 studies. Normative documents from the Ministry of Education and the Federal Nursing Council were also analyzed. The analysis identified three thematic axes: technical nursing education and supervised practice; curriculum, power, and critical education; and supervised practice as a space of praxis. The findings reveal the persistence of technicist elements in nursing technician education, characterized by the fragmentation between theory and practice and the centrality of procedural training. Conversely, supervised practice is recognized as a privileged space for the construction of professional identity, as it integrates education, work, and critical reflection. It is concluded that the strengthening of a critical professional identity depends on the integration between curriculum and supervised practice, guided by an educational perspective that values work as an educational principle.