Conclusions

Abstract

Early readers of my manuscript experienced its content as ‘a voyage of discovery’, a quest for understanding of what lay at the heart of nursing. Their comments accurately reflect not only what the research was about, but how I went about it. I wanted to discover, through the data, what learning to care meant to students in terms of both its content and process. The preceding chapters have been written in the spirit of that discovery in order to draw conclusions on the meaning of care, its interpretation and transmission in ward and classroom and its effects on nurses and patients. I now summarise my main conclusions.