ENADE Enfermagem common mistakes
ENADE Enfermagem · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the discursive answer as an unstructured essay, listing information without answering the command verb (compare, analyze, justify, propose) that the question actually asks.
Candidates trained in expository writing during graduation treat the discursive item as a free-text summary of everything they remember about the topic, and they do not decompose the question's command verb into explicit answer components before writing.
What to do instead
Before writing, underline the command verbs and the number of requested items, draft a one-line outline with one paragraph or bullet per command, and check at the end that each verb has an explicit, labeled response.
Restricting the answer to the biological/clinical dimension of a case and omitting the SUS policy, management, or health-education dimensions that the item explicitly asks about.
Undergraduate study concentrates on pathophysiology and technique, so under exam pressure the candidate defaults to the hospital-clinical script and forgets that ENADE nursing items are framed around the Unified Health System, primary care, and collective health.
What to do instead
Use a fixed four-axis checklist for every case (clinical care, health surveillance/epidemiology, SUS organization and management, ethics/education/communication) and write at least one sentence per axis that the item touches.
Answering the objective items by personal clinical experience or by what a particular service does, instead of by the scientific evidence and the official protocol the item is testing.
Practice in a single unit creates strong local habits (a given dressing technique, a given triage flow) that feel authoritative, and the candidate does not distinguish institutional custom from evidence-based recommendation.
What to do instead
Classify each objective item by the guideline family it belongs to (e.g., infection prevention, patient safety, obstetric care, immunization) and choose the alternative consistent with the current national protocol, treating personal routine as irrelevant.
Misreading the item's scope by ignoring the qualifier 'exceto', 'incorreta', or 'respectivamente', and thus selecting the true statement when the false one was requested.
Skimming under time pressure, plus the strong pull of the first plausible-looking alternative, causes the candidate to answer the remembered content rather than the literal question asked.
What to do instead
Circle every negation and ordering word before evaluating alternatives, and for each alternative state to yourself 'true' or 'false' in writing before choosing the one that matches the requested polarity.
Treating the ENADE specific objective component and the training component (Formação Geral) as the same kind of test, applying clinical reasoning to general-formation items on contemporary issues, technology, and citizenship.
Candidates prepare only for the professional component and underestimate the general-formation items, which require argumentative reading of texts and interpretation of data rather than content recall.
What to do instead
Allocate separate study and time blocks: practice interpreting charts, tables, and short argumentative texts for the general component, and reserve clinical content review for the specific component, using the official weightings.
Leaving the discursive answers of the general-formation component blank or filling them with a personal opinion without reference to the supporting texts and data provided in the item.
Candidates believe an opinion piece has no 'right answer', so they either skip it or write a generic commentary that does not use the material given, losing the points tied to interpretation and argumentation.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed structure for these answers: identify the problem in the texts, take an explicit position, support it with at least two pieces of evidence drawn from the item, and close with a concrete proposal, all within the stated line limit.
Ignoring the line limit and the evaluator's correction criteria, producing either a very short answer that develops nothing or an overlong one whose final argument is cut off.
Candidates never practice writing under a line limit, so they misjudge how much text is needed and lose the concluding synthesis, which is usually where the highest-scoring criterion sits.
What to do instead
Rehearse with a printed answer sheet and a timer, budget lines per command verb (e.g., four to six lines for description, six to eight for justification), and reserve the last two lines for an explicit conclusion.
Writing discursive answers in informal register, with abbreviations, bullet fragments without verbs, or personal anecdotes, instead of the formal academic register expected of a licenciatura graduate.
Habit from social media and from quick clinical notes leads to telegraphic writing, and the candidate does not realize that the discursive item is also assessing written production and teacher-level communication.
What to do instead
Draft answers in complete sentences with explicit connectives, remove all abbreviations and slang in a final editing pass, and keep a personal list of academic connectives and verbs to deploy under time pressure.
Answering the pedagogical items of the licenciatura component as if they were clinical items, prescribing care instead of describing a teaching-learning strategy, assessment instrument, or curriculum decision.
Nurses in licenciatura training identify primarily with the care role, so the pedagogical repertoire (lesson planning, formative assessment, didactic transposition) is less automatized and is displaced under stress.
What to do instead
For every pedagogical item, force the answer to name a learner, an objective, a method, and an evaluation instrument; if the draft lacks any of these four elements, rewrite it before moving on.
Failing to connect the licenciatura answer to the legal and policy framework of health education (national curriculum guidelines, SUS education policy, continuing education), treating pedagogy as a purely technical matter.
Candidates memorize pedagogical authors but do not study how Brazilian regulation structures health professional education, so they cannot anchor proposals in the documents the item is implicitly invoking.
What to do instead
Build a one-page summary of the governing documents (curriculum guidelines for nursing, SUS education and continuing-education policies, evaluation policy) and practice attaching the relevant document to every pedagogical proposal written.