[Professional autonomy in an atomic design: social representations of nurses].

This work has the objective of describe and analyse the social representation of professional autonomy build by public health nurses. The methodology theoretical referencial was the Theory of Social Representation. Interviews were deeply made with 30 nurses of a city in state of Rio de Janeiro. The information was analysed by Alceste software. The results showed the professional autonomy drawing based on professional characteristics (responsibility is balance) and health programming as an important space to autonomy building. It can be concluded that autonomy process is under construction and that the existence of its representation.