[Academia and the social division of nursing work in the Government sector: sinking or surpassing?].

This paper is based on the assumption that the widening gap between manual labor and intellectual tasks tends to weaken the inherent potential of the labor force. Its purpose is to analyze current trends in the division of labor in the Brazilian nursing sector. This is exemplified by the findings of recent surveys conducted by graduate students who studied various aspects of the work processes involved in healthcare, education and research through a qualitative meta-analysis. The non-appropriation of the object by the work process agents was common to all three studies: the graduate students plan an approach to the object that is altered by the advisor in compliance with research interests; reports on educational experiments conducted by nurses highlight the gap between planning and implementation of the activities, hampering full exploration of the purpose of educational efforts; community health agents perform tasks assigned by the nursing staff. Dealing with this alienation is an urgent task, through training and upgrading the subjects so that they have full mastery of the object, the purpose and the work tools, able to share their expertise and work closely together with a critical approach in order to transform the epidemiological profiles of the various social classes.