Aim: The overall aim is to create knowledge about how nursing students’ learning in pairs can be supported in order to create prerequisites for encounters that provide caring and learning support during clinical practice.

Approach and method: A reflective lifeworld research (RLR) approach founded on the epistemology of phenomenology and hermeneutics was used. Based on interviews, diary entries and observations with patients, students and supervisors, descriptive and interpretive analysis in accordance with the RLR approach was performed.

Main findings: Students’ learning in pairs is based on encountering and caring for the patients together. The responsibility of caring for the patients, which is given to the students by their supervisors, is based on supportive relationships that are characterized by movements between independence and cooperation. Supporting students learning in pairs is characterized by a reflective approach focusing on learning in togetherness, where the individual student is also reached and seen, providing opportunities for developing important abilities for learning and caring. Depending on the ability to show respect and to take responsibility a more or less supportive relationship between the patients, the students and the supervisors is created within the learning space.

Conclusions: Supporting students’ learning in pairs is complex due to it taking place in a caring context, where respect must be given towards the patients, the students, the supervisors and other participants who are closely connected to the learning space. Since learning in pairs affects and interweaves learning and caring environments, a reduction to either one of them, learning or caring, is not possible but instead the learning space must be understood as a whole. Optimal conditions for learning in pairs are based on dynamic movements, which require a reflective supervising approach. If these conditions are missing, there is a risk of creating both fragmented caring and learning, where the patients ́ vulnerability and safety needs to be taken into account.

Keywords: caring science; clinical practice; learning space; learning support; pairs of nursing students; reflective lifeworld approach