The autonomy of nurses in several countries

Here in Sweden we have nurse anesthetists and from what I know, they are rather independent in their work. Since I´m in a completely different area myself I´m not sure about their exact duties, but they do for example intubations. Normally in Sweden there is not an anesthetist (physician) present in the surgery room all the time, this person walks between several rooms and the nurses handle the responsibility for the patient during the surgery.

I believe that in general nurses in Sweden are quite independent in their work and many times they perform advanced medical-surgical duties. There is a debate going on though, about the trend going towards nurses becoming more and more like physician assistants than being true experts in nursing. I don´t know if that is the case everywhere in the country though, I think it could be related to where you get your nursing education. I work at a university with a high status medical faculty and of course, that has an impact on nursing education, which is in the same faculty and departments as where the physicians get their education.

Being a registered nurse is a completely accepted choice of career in Sweden, although not high status in the same way as physicians and dentists. I would say that being a registered nurse is valued about the same as being a teacher, the salary is also more like a teachers. There is a clear difference in status, independency, salary and status between being a registered nurse educated in the university than being an assistant nurse with no university education.

Good evening!

Here in Brazil the nurse also needs to be tied to an institution to perform its functions. Autonomy always be supported by protocols or institutional bylaws. Of all the health professionals who work in Brazil, such as doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, nutritionists, psychologists, speech therapists, etc.. the only one who can not work as autonomous is the nurse. There is a branch known as home care where the nurse can be the entrepreneur, but to perform their functions, need to be bound by this company. In the area of public health needs of protocols defined by the ministry of health to perform their functions. There are some colleagues who were more daring, have opened offices to serve the population in need of healing, acumputura, low-risk pregnancy, but the medical board always try to discredit our services.