Introduction: The nurse is increasingly taking care of administrative tasks and moves away from direct patient care, so it is pertinent to approach aspects related to the leadership from the viewpoint of nursing assistants and technicians. Objectives: Identifying if the auxiliary or nursing technician performed the patient care without the presence of the nurse when requested, what was the assistance. And identifying under the oversight of nursing assistants and technicians who have already performed nursing care without the presence of the nurse, if there was any kind of harm to the patient, and if so, what was the harm. Method: The data collection was performed through a semi-structured interview. The sample consisted of 150 nursing assistants and technicians who undergraduate nursing courses at two private colleges in the countryside of São Paulo. Results: From 150 (100%) participants, the nurse's absence for the procedure was described in 88 (58.66%) cases. Among the tasks handled by nursing auxiliaries and technicians, there are those ones that are exclusive to the nurse and some others that are not of technical and legal competence of the profession, doing 12 (8%) of the participants report several damages to the patients. Conclusions: Most of the participants have already performed procedures that should have the supervision of the nurse or even be performed privately by him, a fact that contributed to the occurrence of harm to the patient.