[Continuing education in psychiatric nursing: a reflection on concepts].

The concern with continuing education programs that prepare nurses to work in psychiatric nursing led us to conduct this study, the first one on the "development of psychiatric and mental health nursing personnel" research line. Its objective is to make a reflection on the concepts of continuing education, in-service and permanent, found in recent nursing education literature. To carry out the literature review of the concepts we reviewed the MEDLINE and LILACS data bases, theses and dissertations and a number of classical titles on the theme. After the analysis of the concepts and discussions with experts, we concluded that the continuing in-service education denomination is the one that presents more consonance with the authors and experts that were consulted, as well as the one that better meets the demands of knowledge in the area of psychiatric nursing towards the quality of assistance.