Although care is pointed as the essence of the nursing profession, there is a lack of discussion on its meaning in the nursing education. The objective of this study is to identify the meaning of care for graduate students aiming at contributing to a more contextualized teaching. In order to guide the study, we used the concepts of affiliation and membership notion from ethnomethodology. The subjects were students from a state nursing graduation course in Rio de Janeiro. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews taken after group dynamics which objective was to apprehend the way students described care until that moment in their nursing course. We concluded that as students become more involved with nursing they incorporate concepts that contribute to reinforce or to transform their previous experiences and experiences acquired during the graduation course. Therefore, concepts and behaviors are apprehended and reproduced by students as components of their professional identity.