[Learning to care: nursing students' experiences with children with cancer].

This article reports the experience with situations occurring during the practice of the discipline Fundamentals of Human Care of the Nursing Graduation Course of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. It documents the perceptions of 12 students of the 4th semester of the Nursing Course at the Oncology Pediatrics Unit of a teaching hospital, who daily recorded their relationship with patients and their families. These records express not only the students' learning, but also changes on their conception as to oncology wards, and the acknowledgment of the importance of affection in their treatment process. It also points out that under standing children and their family life history helps to improve care.