According to pedagogical education principies there should be a relationship between theory and practice.The present article proves that in the case of nursing education this is not so.The model used to edúcate nurses does not square up with the reality of being a professional nurse, there is a dichotomy between the student and the professional.Somewhere a rupture is produced.Perhaps the rupture occurs as a result of the simple difference between school -"theory"-and hospital -"practice", or may be due to the two different ways of understanding the nursing profession: i) the nurse as the physician's assistant, or ii) the nurse as the professional who plans nursing care.