[The existence of basic concepts in the clinical learning of nursing care]

The purpose of this study was to examine how the basic concepts of the nursing science: man, health, environment and nursing action, appear in the clinical learning of nursing care. The research was focused on the content of the clinical lesson, worked out by nursing students. 13 nursing students, graduating within six months, wrote the description about one patient and his/her care, which was the content of the lesson. Descriptions were analyzed by the content analysis method. The concept apparatus was based on the basic concepts of the nursing science. The results indicated that all concepts were perceptible but their contents were fairly limited. When the students described man, their patient/client, they told mostly about man's physical dimension. Even though they recognized man's consciousness and social dimensions, they did not give direction to the nursing practice. Health was seen as the absence of an illness and its symptoms. Environment was only rarely mentioned. According to these results students were very interested in those dimensions of nursing care, which were caused by medical care. They did not present any independent activities of nursing care. There were also difficulties to carry out nursing care systematically.