The formation of nursing professionals requires a dynamic teaching that provides the acquisition of skills and abilities to execute care, management, teaching and research activities. In this perspective, the operative groups are a teaching and nursing care strategy, performed by a knowledge exchange and collective interventions.

Discuss the experience in nursing care to the person with mental disorder.

It is about a fourth year undergraduate nursing students’ experience report. The activities were developed at a center of psychosocial attention in João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil. Once a week, four operative group sessions were held under the theme “men's health”. In the first session were agreed norms of behavior and activities plans on which the participants chose the subjects.

The operative group provided a friendly environment to exchange knowledge, in which the contents where addressed from the participant's acquirements and experiences. There was a good group interaction. The students conducted the activities under the teacher and monitor's supervision.

This report provided experiences that contributed to the students’ teaching-learning process as well as for understanding the nurse's insertion in the care scenario and the use of soft technologies to an efficient care to the person with mental disorder. The students also noticed the operative group's impact in the user's lives though sentences such as “It was fun”, “I won gifts”, “liked it”, “I learned”.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.