This paper emphasizes students' learning when facing reality guided by pedagogical investigation. Its aim was to systematize the facilities and difficulties perceived by family members receiving health care and to analyze its pedagogical implications in the student learning process in the Public Health Nursing Fundamentals and Practices course. The study was retrospective, basedon domestic inquiry data resulting from a pedagogical investigation involving undergraduate nursing students in 2006. A data contentanalysis method was carried out together with the perspective of service structure and processes. Facilities and difficulties that emerged as essential aspects respectively were the quality of patient-practitioner relationships and the fact that receiving health care took so long due to an excessive demand. These issues corresponded to moments of cognitive capacity mobilization as patients' needs were noticed and the pedagogical practice in the learning process was optimized.
Public health; Higher education; Learning by association; Nursing
