Clinical learning experiences and professional nurse caring: a critical phenomenological study of female baccalaureate nursing students.

The purpose of this critical phenomenological study was to discover, describe, and analyze how nursing students learn professional nurse caring in the clinical context of nursing education. In this article, I report on interviews from 18 female baccalaureate nursing students, 17 of whom are European American and one of whom is African American. Participants in this study narrated their stories about learning caring by first describing their understanding of how they created caring with patients. After uncovering the layers of their patient care interactions, they were then able to answer the research question of how they learned caring in clinical. Because participants' interactions with patients were the context for the development of their understanding of caring, I identify the relational theme of caring and interacting with patients as the central focal point for narrating stories about caring. From the data analysis, I report two constitutive patterns: the first, creative caring, contains seven themes, and the second, learning caring, contains five themes. Findings from this research are summarized as "embodied caring knowledge." This research has implications for nursing faculty, students, and practitioners who are interested in enhancing their understanding of living and learning caring within nursing.