Preferred Realities in the Construction of Professional Identity for Nurses in Training

White & Epston (1991) state that people live their lives through stories. And these stories shape their lives through the real effects they have on them. So, we can say that talking in a certain way about what you are experiencing can build your reality by virtue of which you will act further. Behind the expression preferred reality is that part of the story life of a person which sustains what she likes about her. Opposite to preferred reality is the reality that tells about the person a story that she rejects and this can create a problematic context in her life. If we think about the professions that involve practice during training, we can understand the importance of the feedback that students often receive in practice from their teachers. The practice in the medical field, however, has a peculiarity, because the students receive another important feedback than the one from their teacher and it is the one from the patient that proved to be important for the students in nursing enrolled in this study and also one of the most important relationship brought into the conversations was the relationship with the patient with a specific dynamic of power.