The Post Graduate Nurse Program at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande PPGEnf/FURG was created by Deliberation No. 005/2002 of the Teaching, Research and Outreach Council, in 2002. It started with the Master’s degree Course and six years later, in 2008 the PhD course was approved, starting with the first class in April 2009. Both Master's and PhD in Nursing courses were, each in their own time, the first created in the health area at FURG.

Integrated in a University that assumes the coastal ecosystem as an institutional mission, the PPGEnf/FURG is structured under a socio-environmental perspective that comprises life and the health-disease process, based on a horizontal, inseparable relationship between human beings and the environment. Its Area of Concentration, called Nursing and Health, is focused on the production of knowledge in nursing and health to support the practice of professionals theoretically, scientifically and methodologically, aiming to meet the interests and health needs of the population, considering their environment of insertion, structural, functional, organizational, ethical and educational components of health work.

The Program is aimed at nurses and other professionals interested in working in the field of interdisciplinary health and aims to train masters and doctors capable of promoting the advancement of knowledge and the production of technologies, in the areas of Nursing and Health, in the dimensions managerial, ethical, educational, political and assistance, for the benefit of a fair and more environmentally sustainable society.

Mission: to train human resources, masters, doctors and post-doctoral researchers, as a collective enterprise, at the service of society and produce knowledge scientifically committed to the search for solutions to local and regional health problems, which are inseparable from national and of the global socio-environmental context.

Vision: to be recognized for excellence in the training of masters, doctors and post-doctoral researchers and in the production of scientific knowledge in the field of socio-environmental health.