Objectives:

Exploring the social representations of nursing students about induced abortion and discuss the social representations of nursing care for women undergoing an abortion or post-abortion with complications.

Method:

This is a qualitative study based on the Theory of Social Representations, carried out with 16 nursing students from the Nursing course in the Northeast region of Brazil held in November 2022. The inclusion criterion was being a student of nursing duly enrolled in the 2022.2 semester at UNEB and exclusion must be under 18 years of age. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the Iramuteq software, which generated the Descending Hierarchical Classification.

Results:

After processing the data and grouping the words carried out by the system, the text segments were classified and the names of the classes were defined: Class 1: Nursing care for women undergoing an abortion; Class 2: Representation of induced abortion from the perspective of sexual and reproductive rights and its legalization as a way of reducing the risk of complications and death; Class 3: Representation of induced abortion from the perspective of sexual and reproductive rights and its legalization as a way of reducing the risk of complications and death.

Conclusion:

It is necessary that during graduation the topic is discussed more frequently so that knowledge can be expanded in the face of the challenges and complexities that future professionals will deal with when providing care to women in the process of miscarriage or post-abortion with complications.

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