Sensibility in the Relations and Interactions of Teaching and Learning to Be and Do Nursing

this qualitative study focused on proxemic feelings and feelings of detachment and ambiguity among professors-nurses concerning their experiences. this study aimed to reveal the meanings of sensibility held by being-professor-nurse in teaching and learning to be and do nursing. the theoretical-philosophical support is based on merleau-ponty's existential phenomenological approach and the hermeneutics phenomenology of paul ricoeur was used. nineteen professors-nurses from a higher education institution in the south of brazil were interviewed between november and december 2006. sensibility was revealed as the capacity to observe details in order to intervene in a situation the best way possible, and also as a way to break with exclusive models of the cognitive-instrumental rationality of science and technique, since sensibility is the basis for developing other ways of teaching and learning to be and do nursing.