Role-playing: teaching strategy that encourages reflections on nursing care.

OBJECTIVE: Describe the reflections of nursing students on nursing care through the use of role-playing.

METHOD: Qualitative research with descriptive-exploratory approach and documentary base. The data were collected from portfolios of 32 students from an undergraduate course in the Southern Brazil. The analysis of the data followed the steps of sorting, classification in structures of relevance, synthesis and interpretation.

RESULTS: Two empirical categories were obtained: (1) Feelings in the act of taking care and receiving care and (2) Reversing roles: benefits to the nurse in the act of caring.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: The use of role-playing as a strategy for teaching the theme of care to undergraduate students encouraged reflections about the skills and abilities necessary for the act of taking care and favored the students' self-perception as nurses, appropriating the essence of their future profession: care.