Abstract

The article's purpose is to interpret the primary documentary source entitled "Circulares 1955. General Directorate. Calls for Competition" of the Bulletin of the National Health Service, Chile, 1955 from a historiographic perspective. The method used was documentary source analysis, according to Jocelyn Letourneau, which divides the documentary analysis into two main steps: the descriptive phase that precedes the reading of the document and a second phase that allows the observer to deliver a judgment of the documentary source. According to the analysis performed, the categories that emerged are the Context of Health and Nursing institutionalism, and The Nursing sub-department and the meanings of its implementation. The main conclusions are that the National Health Service organized a health structure of unification and decentralization of health and gave nurses their administrative organization called the Nursing Subdepartment. The documentary source shows how nurses assumed administrative positions throughout the country as a product of the symbolic validation of the profession from the state authority, giving them power in their professional work and thus protagonism in national health.