The social determinants of health, the case of nursing

Abstract

In nursing, their disciplinary theorists describe different approaches to caring for people always using the metaparadigm, thus obtaining a theorized care perspective. In this sense the speeches that institutionalize and sustain their practice usually deal on support, help, self-determination, autonomy, comfort, care education, humanism, integrity, damage limitation, disease prevention and/or health promotion. However, in daily practice it is shown that rather than taking preventive actions that have as an intervention starting point social determinants of health to provide an inclusive, transcultural and humanized care, most of the daily work done is based on actions that in best-case scenario are for healing or for containing the disease, which is why in daily practice prevention actions are tiny. Finally, the adequacy of human, material and financial resources are the most important factor to provide safe care; the suitability or lack of these is the combined result of the prevailing public policies that favor or not a fair and inclusive health system and are also those that mostly impact the national health reality.