Objetive: To measure the caring ability of nursing professionals that work in a third level Health Care Providing Institution in Sincelejo, Colombia. Methodology: This being a descriptive cross-sectional quantitative study, the sample consisted of 30 nurses from the care area, which were administered the Care Ability Inventory, which measures three categories: knowledge, value and patience. The information was processed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences: SPSS software. Results: The caregivers characterization reported that the age was between 20 to 30 years in the 53,3%, females predominated in 80,0% of the participants, the marital status, married, occupied 60,0%, work experience history surpassed 60 months 67,0% and 93,0% declared not suffering any chronic illnesses. In the caring ability aspect, 46,6% were placed in the medium category, 40,0% in the low and 13,3% in the high. Conclusions: The results show the need to strengthen the capacity of professional caregivers to face the everyday situations in the act of caring, in the aspects of knowledge, value and patience.