Nursing represents the largest professional category in the health field worldwide, with 27.9 million professionals, representing 59% of the entire health workforce. The World Health Organization has warned of the need for greater investments in training, better working conditions and encouraging the development of nursing leadership as one of the means to achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, even though they are essential to health systems, these professionals face problems related to the representation of their image, which contributes to a scenario of devaluation, which has proved to be an obstacle to the development of the profession. Thus, in an exercise of understanding this phenomenon, it is considered that the factors that follow contribute greatly to configure the devaluation scenario.