The article analyses health care work. It summarizes the main findings of ethnographic research in nursing education. It shows that the work of the nurse is, in its relation to care, a paradigmatic example of the tensions at work between two forms of solicitude, which are defined as opposite, as they meld hierarchical professional territories. The first form of care is oriented towards the cure of the disease, the second to well-being and support. The author concludes by putting the results of the research into perspective, in terms of the current evolution of actual health care needs, which require a new articulation of these two forms of solicitude.