Collective constructions. By Mariana Torre

The practice of nursing in Latin America, especially in the field of intensive care, has special features: our geographical position, socio-political and cultural reality and above all, our historical past and quality of “emerging countries” (a great euphemism)…

We have had the luck of travel quite our huge and generous region, and meeting many colleagues and hospitals. This experience gave us the opportunity of make a diagnosis: our problems, to the South of the river Bravo, are practically the same and are characterized by:

1. Shortage of specialized resources. Nurses are needed everywhere, however in Latin America responds to different reasons than those of the rest of the world. While in developed countries it´s explained by the aging population and the overspecialization, in our continent the reason are the deficient laboral conditions and the short wages, what forces to the professional to have two or more jobs to to survive.

2. A huge training gap. The access to training is not a part of the political institutions, but it is centralized in universities only in the large capital.

3. In spite of our past and present common, we have a barrier with the largest country of the region, Brazil, and this barrier is the language.

Having made this diagnosis, two years ago I was talking with Dra. Renata Pietro (from Sao Paulo) sharing a coffee, and we started to dream with an idea: convene to colleagues of all Latin American countries (and beyond, but Latin American mostly), to do an updated compendium of intensive nursing practices both basic as advanced to arrive to all the corners of our huge continent , without barriers in the knowledge or in the language. We all have an invaluable baggage of experiences and knowledge, we only need to encourage ourselves and give the step. Much is said about in Latin America we do not publish, maybe it´s true… personally I think that it´s because we don´t have the habit of doing so for multiple reasons, but I am sure that it is not for lack of capacity.

Supported by our scientific societies scientific, the Association of Intensive Care Medicine of Brazil (AMIB) and the Argentinean Society of Intensive Care (SATI) we did a wide call to participate in this project, that was conceived from the beginning as a collective construction.

The first surprise was the huge echo that we had in the call: emails were flying full of enthusiasm, accepting the challenge from every corner of our great country. Then, we begin to dream two editions: in Spanish and Portuguese… and they said YES OF COURSE! And we thought a date of delivery: the Panamerican and Iberian Congress of Intensive Care Medicine, Porto Alegre, November 2016… and here are: “Intensive nursing: integrative practices“.