Bachelor of Science in Nursing

The ESEnfC Undergraduate Degree in Nursing is designed to train General Care Nurses who are ready to work in any healthcare context, especially in the European region. Our high-quality scientific, technical, and relational training develops the following skills and abilities:

DESIGNING AND MANAGING NURSING CARE PROJECTS: Analyzing a situation, exercising clinical judgment, devising a care plan, and focusing on actual or potential human responses to the life processes and health-disease situations of individuals, families, groups, and communities to obtain results that are sensitive to nursing care.

1. Getting involved in the health system

2. Collecting clinical data

3. Analyzing clinical data

4. Establishing nursing diagnoses

5. Prescribing nursing interventions

6. Planning care

7. Evaluating the process and results of interventions 

8. Managing emotions

IMPLEMENTING AUTONOMOUS AND/OR INTERDEPENDENT NURSING CARE: Acting with individuals, families, groups, and communities, healthy or ill, at the various levels of prevention, considering their actual or potential responses to life processes and health-disease situations, in emergency and disaster situations, in all environments, to maintain or restore health and providing well-being.

1. Carrying out health promotion, disease prevention, curative, adaptive support, rehabilitation, and palliative actions.

2. Carrying out nursing actions resulting from the initiative or prescription of other professionals in the team:

3. Assisting the person in performing self-care daily.

4. Assisting family members/caregivers in the role of caregiver.

ESTABLISHING A PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP: Interacting according to the different roles, respecting and being respected, to establish trust. Building a positive relationship, establishing effective functional, pedagogical, and therapeutic communication in a care context, and considering cultural diversity.

1. Establishing a trusting relationship

2. Establishing therapeutic communication

3. Empowering: Informing, teaching, instructing, and training

4. Transmitting data and information

5. Building teaching materials

6. Working in teams

7. Establishing partnerships with clients

MANAGING OPERATIONAL RESOURCES: Mobilizing resources (human, material, technological and environmental; time and knowledge) and deciding on their rational use to meet the needs of individuals, families, communities, and organizations.

1. Coordinating activities and health care

2. Delegating and supervising tasks

3. Managing relational conflicts

4. Managing the use of materials, equipment, and technology

5. Managing the physical environment

COMMITTING TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Taking an active role in their own development and learning, and adopting a reflective and ethical attitude to promote the quality of care and the development of the discipline and the profession.

1. Investing in self-training

2. Building their professional identity

3. Promoting quality of care

4. Evaluating personal and collective professional practices

MANAGING KNOWLEDGE: Researching, analyzing, constructing, and mobilizing knowledge for personal development, professional practice, nursing discipline, and health systems.

1. Using information and communication technologies (ICT)

2. Managing data and information

3. Reflecting in and on action

4. Selecting evidence relevant to practice

5. Producing professional documents

6. Disseminating scientific information

7. Participating in research programs

Organization

The course lasts four years (240 ECTS) and is structured into theoretical, theoretical-practical, and practical teaching units that take place on the school's premises, and clinical teaching units that take place predominantly in institutions in Central Portugal.

The central theme of the first year is the human being in its environment throughout life.

The second and third years focus on nursing in transitional situations that generate vulnerability, dependency, and suffering.

The fourth year focuses on integral nursing and professionality.

Pedagogical framework

The program aligns with the mission, vision, and values of the ESEnfC, distinguishing this institution from others.

The institution is dedicated to upholding the dignity of the individual and the freedom of thought. It fosters and values creativity and solidarity in the construction of a learning institution. It also promotes freedom of cultural, scientific, technical, and artistic creation, ensuring the free expression of ideas and opinions and the plurality of perspectives. Its actions are founded upon the principles of solidarity, democracy, transparency, and participation.

The teaching methodologies employed are based on a socio-constructivist paradigm:

- Students actively engage in the construction of their own knowledge (in the personal, empirical, ethical, aesthetic and emancipatory domains, and in the conceptual, attitudinal and praxeological domains), which is articulated with contexts and learning situations; it results from reflection and must be questioned; it is temporal, in that it is not permanent.

- The student's knowledge is reconstructed based on previous knowledge, in a process that is both individual and socially framed by interaction with others and the connection to the reality of the situations they come into contact with. Pedagogical devices facilitate social interactions with people and situations that facilitate learning.

- The student is engaged in a process of transition, both as an individual and as a trainee.

Legal framework

The current study plan for the Undergraduate Degree in Nursing at ESEnfC is published in Order no. 2775/2020, of 28 February (https://files.diariodarepublica.pt/2s/2020/02/042000000/0023600238.pdf) and is in accordance with the regulatory framework in force, namely Decree-Law no. 74/2020, of 24 March, in its consolidated version, which approves the legal framework for higher education degrees and diplomas; Directive 2013/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of November 20, 2013, on the recognition of professional qualifications; and Regulation no. 190/2015, which defines the Framework of Competencies for Generalist Nurses.