Perceção do cuidar de um grupo de estudantes finalistas de enfermagem

The present study falls within the scope of nursing education, focusing on the teaching/learning process of care. In the course of their training, students should gain a conception of care that incorporates the different dimensions of caring. Our goal was to identify the perception of caring in a group of graduate students in nursing. This is an exploratory, quantitative, descriptive study. Data collection was performed by administering the “Scale to assess the meaning of care – EASC” authored by Bison (2003, p. 26-28). The sample consists of 197 final year students at the Portuguese School of Nursing. The results show that students nearing completion of the course value caring most when it involves interpersonal interaction and therapeutic intervention, and values less care as affective and caring as a moral imperative or ideal. The results seem to point to the need for a systematic evaluation of these results both during and at the end of the teaching/ learning process so that the training process culminates in global learning where care is the result of a harmonious assessment of its different dimensions.