The role of nursing in the 35 years of the Unified Health System - SUS

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of Nursing over the 35 years of Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS), highlighting its historical, political, and technical contributions to the consolidation of health as a citizenship right in the country. Based on a theoretical and reflective approach grounded in authors such as Paim, Merhy, Ceccim, Egry, and Freire, the discussion addresses the participation of the profession in the struggles of the Sanitary Reform, its role in Primary Health Care (PHC) and in care management, as well as the contemporary challenges related to professional recognition, working conditions, and critical training. The analysis demonstrates that Nursing, as the largest workforce within the SUS, plays a central role in implementing the principles of universality, comprehensiveness, and equity, while also serving as a guardian of the ethical-political project of collective health. It concludes that strengthening Nursing means strengthening the SUS itself, demanding public policies that recognize its leadership and ensure dignified conditions for the exercise of humanized and emancipatory care.