Introduction:

Nursing professionals are potentially exposed to occupational accidents, especially in critical sectors of the hospital environment and must incorporate the standard precautions to minimize this risk. Adherence to standard precautions is strongly influenced by psychosocial factors, should this relationship be understood.

Objective:

Identify the social representations of nursing professionals about the occupational risk and to assess their relationship with adherence to standard precautions.

Methods:

Exploratory research, qualitative approach, based on the Theory of Social Representations. The participants were 150 nursing workers in critical sectors of the hospital network of Teresina, Piauí, Brazil. Data were collected through the technique of free association of words, and analyzed by factorial analysis of correspondence.

Results:

The core of the representations consisted of the words "care", "technical skill" and "standards". It has observed that, for nursing professionals with mid-level representation of occupational risk was strongly connected to the technique, while top-level professionals provided will represent a more biopsychosocial approach. The field of technique procedures seems to provide a sense of security that justify negligence in the use of standard precautions.

Conclusions:

Differences in the way of representing the occupational hazard within the same professional category sets in major obstacle to adherence to standard precautions. This qualitative difference has the potential to influence not only on membership fees but in itself epidemiology of these events and shows that there is not necessarily a common sense within this professional group with regard to occupational health.

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