Abstract The purpose of this research was to develop and test a conceptual framework concerning health care students' views of nursing and factors associated with it. The research process was conducted during 1992-1998 as a practice-based process of theory development, and it included four phases: 1) developing a conceptual framework inductively, 2) developing a measurement tool for testing the conceptual framework, 3) empirical testing of the conceptual framework and 4) analysing the core concept of the conceptual framework. In the first phase of the research, a conceptual framework of health care students' orientation to nursing was developed inductively using the Grounded Theory method. A group of students (n = 35) wrote essays and were interviewed at the beginning of their nursing programme in a polytechnic. In the second phase of the research, an instrument development process was carried out in order to test the conceptual framework. The instrument was tested via a panel evaluation (n = 15) and by using data collected from 184 students of health care. Besides that, 25 students completed the questionnaire twice. The data were used to evaluate the stability of the instrument. In the third phase of the research the hypotheses derived from the conceptual framework and the previous research results were tested by using the data (n = 184) which had been collected with the tool developed earlier. Besides that, the students from the first phase of the research (n = 19) were interviewed. These qualitative data were analysed by deductive content analysis. In the fourth phase of the research, the concept "orientation to nursing" was analysed in order to further elaborate the conceptual framework. Three different types of students' orientations to nursing were found: a caring orientation, a nursing profession orientation and a life orientation. The orientations differed from each other with regard to the prerequisites of orientation, the core of orientation, the meaning of nursing and the goals applied to a nursing career.According to the results of testing the theoretical framework, a majority of the students were highly life-oriented, and two thirds had average nursing expertise and caring orientation scores. The special characteristics of the students' orientation were emphasised during the education: caring-oriented students emphasised their personal development, nursing profession-oriented students the integration of theory and practice and life-oriented students emphasised the integration of studies, work and personal life. The nursing expertise and life orientation scores increased during the education. Caring orientation did not change during the education. On the basis of the research results, a tentative theory of health care students' orientation to nursing is presented and methods for developing the teaching of nursing and learning to nurse are suggested.