AIM: To describe the variations in undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of learning during clinical practice when using the conceptual learning model, Model for Improvements in Learning Outcomes (MILO), grounded in a caritative caring perspective.

BACKGROUND: A conceptual learning model grounded in hermeneutics and a caritative caring perspective addressing ethical values of caring and learning, intertwining didactics, nursing, pathophysiology and medicine to facilitate nursing students' learning during clinical practice and ease challenges in relation to healthcare and supervision was implemented.

METHODS: A qualitative descriptive design with a phenomenographic approach was used. Twenty strategically sought undergraduate nursing students in semester six from one university participated (19 women and 1 man aged between 23 and 40 years). Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews after the model had been applied in a 7-week clinical practice course in different departments (surgical, medical and psychiatric/medical rehabilitation care) at 3 hospitals and in 13 municipalities (home care in southern Sweden) and then analysed to identify variations (similarities and differences) in ways of understanding the phenomenon of students' learning using MILO.

RESULTS: Five mutually exclusive descriptive categories of what MILO's concepts and applications had meant for the students' learning emerged; the outcome space was illustrated by the following metaphors: a way to bridge the learning threshold; a way to learn to incorporate the spirit of meaning in caring; a way to learn to put one's soul into something; a way to notice the atmosphere's impact on learning; and a twosome's contradiction in the learning.

CONCLUSIONS: Achieving a synthesis of ethical, aesthetical, theoretical and practical knowledge in becoming professional caring nurses was found to be facilitated using MILO. However, the use of peer learning was perceived as contradictory.