Background:

communicating assertively presents itself as a social skill. It is essential to nursing practice, namely family health, to ensure the success of relationships with users, families, and the team.

Objectives:

to analyze the relationship between the sociodemographic and professional characteristics of nurses in the Family Health Units of an ACeS in the north of Portugal and the adoption of assertive behaviors.

Methodology:

quantitative, cross-sectional descriptive- correlational type. Sample consisting of 66 nurses. Data collected through an electronic questionnaire, consisting of two parts: sociodemographic and professional characteristics and an assessment scale for nurses' assertive behaviors.

Results:

nurses often adopt assertive behaviors with the patient and with the multidisciplinary team (4.860.65). There was a statistically significant relationship between experience in other services and liking for the workplace and the adoption of assertive behaviors. There was a positive correlation between the length of service in the career and the adoption of assertive behaviors.

Conclusions:

the high levels of assertive behavior evidenced guarantee an effective and safe practice for professionals and users. The professional characteristics, contrary to the sociodemographic ones, were the ones that were more related to assertive behaviors. Promoting environments favorable to the practice can be decisive for the assertiveness of nurses.