This qualitative research tries to understand experiences and meaning that nurses have about nurse care protocols, since its nature, advantages, or disadvantages. Methods: some elements of ethnography were used for data recollecting, and grounded theory was used for analyzing information, 7 nurses, with wide experience in protocols development and implementation, were interviewed. Results: the main categories were that protocols are necessary, but in some cases, nurses do not follow protocols and nurses follow them excessively, in both cases, a care deconstruction takes place, results were analyzed from Betty Neuman theory. Conclusion: protocols should be rethought, they might be called just guidelines, nurses should think systematically and critically, caring is more than following protocols, when nurses just do what protocols suggest, they are not caring, they are breaking the care as a concept and as a practice, nurses have to care of caring in order for caring people.

nursing assessment, nursing protocols, nursing practice, qualitative research, systems theory, ethnography