At the end of the undergraduate nursing course, the primacy of any trainee is to practice the profession for which he has been preparing for four or five years. However, very often, the graduates are faced with an unfavorable scenario in a job market saturated with professionals trained in search of the first opportunity and, consequently, this scenario is increasingly demanding. Along with this panorama, it is added the inexperience and the natural insecurity of those who have just graduated. On the other hand, many graduates, postgraduates, and experienced professionals who are already in the labor market, live, day after day, another type of insecurity – generated by the instability of the bargaining relations of work, increasingly tenuous. Despite the different perspectives, lived at different moments of the professional career, the way to reach the goal of differentiation in the nursing area is the same: focus, dedication, study, preparation, and perseverance.
Descriptors: Nursing; Internship and Residence; Job market; Nursing Education.
At the end of the undergraduate nursing course, the primacy of any trainee is to practice the profession for which he has been preparing for four or five years. However, very often, the graduates are faced with an unfavorable scenario in a labor market saturated with professionals trained in search for the first opportunity and, consequently, increasingly demanding. Along with this scenario, we add the inexperience and insecurity, natural to those who have just graduated, not being ready to assume the responsibility of exercising nursing.
On the other hand, many graduates, postgraduates and experienced professionals, already inserted in the labor market, live, day after day, another type of insecurity that is generated by the instability of the bargaining relations of work, which are increasingly tenuous. Associated and directly proportional to this insecurity are low wages, work overload, need for double working hours, among others. A survey published in 2015 on the profile and working conditions of nursing in Brazil(1), with a sample of 1,804,535 nursing professionals, reveals alarming data that include, in addition to lack of security, lack of respect and cordiality by their superiors, discrimination, professional wear and tear, lack of infrastructure and violence, especially psychological.
In this context, we have, on the one hand, the need for egress from entering the more experienced and secure labor market; and, on the other hand, the need for those already in the labor market and seeking stability, better remuneration and better working conditions. It can be seen from this panorama that there are different priorities - for the newly graduated in nursing the primacy of entering a postgraduate course in the form of residence, which gives him greater experience and security to practice one of the regulated specialties; and for the professional, already inserted in the labor market, to enter the public career as a stable statutory servant, according to the constitutional prerogatives.
Although they are different needs, lived in different moments of the professional career, the way to reach the goal of differentiation in the nursing area is the same: focus, dedication, study, preparation and perseverance. Due to these needs, strongly influenced by the factors pointed out above, there is a significant increase each year in the number of candidates competing for the disputed vacancies in public tenders and residencies in the nursing area, some of which have thousands of candidates competing for a single vacancy. In this sense, the process of conquering one of these places becomes increasingly difficult, requiring not only the mastery and memorization of theoretical contents, but above all, the improvement of study techniques and the search for tools and specific strategies to maximize results to prepare with greater efficiency, efficacy and effectiveness, as well as develop behavioral skills fundamental to self-development and resilience to this process, such as self-motivation, self-knowledge, self-control, self-esteem and self-confidence.
Although the current assessment process is still based on a predominantly educational model of education, in order to achieve the best results it is necessary to transcend the model of depositary teaching and learning, whereby the student receives a gigantic range of concepts and merely needs to assimilate "key words" to answer a question correctly, for a model in which the student and his/her individual needs are the center of the teaching-learning process. This, believing that learning, apprehending and undertaking, from the anthropological and pedagogical point of view, are different concepts, however, intrinsically related and interdependent; that acquiring knowledge and/or skills, comprehending and understanding in depth and correctly applying the content, through interdisciplinary articulation, are the basis for the development of central axes of reasoning that permeate the programmatic contents of the edicts and guide the resolution of questions of more assertive form.
Thus, one of the great challenges is still the paradox between the evaluation model/methodology of the competition tests and the application of a teaching-learning method that prioritizes the construction of knowledge from the individual, without losing sight of the quantity and quality of information necessary for the student to achieve the result: the approval.
Another major challenge for those preparing for approval in public tender tests and residency tests is the time factor: how to study correctly in order to obtain more quality information in less time, taking into account the short deadlines between the edicts and the exams and the numerous other demands resulting from the academic, professional and personal life. Vilfredo Pareto, an illustrious political scientist, sociologist and Italian economist who, from his studies on income distribution and pure economics in the late nineteenth century, developed the Pareto Theorem and introduced the concept of the "Pareto Efficiency". According to the "Pareto Law", also known as Rule 80/20, approximately 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes(2). In a perspective of understanding beyond economics, this theorem can be seen as one of the central axes of a process of preparation for contests that, in practice, is reflected in greater efficiency from objectivity, focus and assertiveness.
Despite all these peculiarities and difficulties inherent in the preparation process and the evaluation context in which we are inserted, it is understood that the knowledge and experience resulting from this immersion in favor of the objective of being approved and becoming a differentiated professional brings results that go beyond approval. Knowledge is an intangible asset that transcends change; knowledge generates transformation. And transformation, even in the field of individual development, is intrinsically linked to the collective development of a strong, empowered, critical and socially recognized nursing. In this broader perspective of preparation where priority-setting, focus and method are the basis of the process, results are no longer the primary objective and become mere consequences.