[Self care as a condition for care to others in health practice].

We need to take a critical look at our practices and the relationships we construct in our personal and professional life, with a view to leading a life guided by ethics. In this text, we discuss governability practices that are built in the relations between health and especially nursing professionals, with the health institutions, with the clients and with the nursing profession. We conclude that, for persons to deliver care and guide others, like nurses do in their practice, they first need to demonstrate that they can guide themselves, that they know the limits of their practice and can respect the other as someone different from themselves.