Objective:

To understand the meaning of self-care for nursing students at a public university during their university training process.

Method:

Hermeneutical phenomenological study. Sixteen in-depth interviews were carried out with nursing students from a public university in the city of Medellin, during the years 2021 and 2022. Narrative was used, which allowed a greater approach to people as social individuals and the understanding of the way in which they construct their personal and cultural realities.

Results:

Four thematic categories emerged: Changes and transformations of the student, meaning of self-care, aspects that have not yet been incorporated, and practices that have been incorporated.

Conclusions:

The narratives of the participants about what those first years of encounter with university life mean and the process lived throughout it, allow understanding the paths taken from their perspectives and contexts, as well as understanding of the efforts and struggles from its limitations. Transcending this understanding, and from the Foucaultian paradigm, it is also important to hope, as some of them have done, that they learn to know and recognize-themselves, their desires, capacities, strengths, resources and limitations, as well as to learn how to overcome and transform the various moments into a continuous process of introspection and reflection by making self-care an attitude of life and transcending the knowledge they have learned in their university education when they care for others.

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