<div><i>Background</i>: the creative
capacities and the knowledge of the employees are components of the
intellectual capital of the company; hence, their training is a key activity to
achieve the objectives and business growth. <i>Objective</i>:
To understand the meaning of learning in the hospital from the experiences of
its participants through the inquiry of meanings. <i>Method</i>: Qualitative design with an ethnographic approach, which
forms part of a wider research, on organizational culture; carried out mainly
in 2 public hospitals of the Community of Madrid. The data has been collected
for thirteen months. A total of 23 in-depth interviews and 69 field sessions
have been conducted through the participant observation technique. <i>Results</i>: the worker and the student
learn from what they see and hear. The great hospital offers an unregulated
education, dependent on the professional, emphasizing that they learn
everything. Some transmit the best and others, even the humiliating ones, use
them for dirty jobs, focusing on the task and nullifying the possibility of
thinking. They show a reluctant attitude to teach the newcomer, even if they
do, they do not have to oppose their practice. In short, a learning in the
variability, which produces a rupture between theory and practice; staying with
what most convinces them, including negligence, which affects the patient's
safety. In the small hospital, it is a teaching based on a practice based on
scientific evidence and personalized attention, on knowing the other. Clearly
taught from the reception, to treat with caring patience and co-responsibility
in the care. The protagonists of both scenarios agree that teaching and helping
new people establish lasting and important personal relationships to feel happy
and want to be in that service or hospital. <i>Conclusion</i>:
There are substantial differences related to the size of the center, as to what
and how the student and the novel professional are formed. At the same time
that the meaning of value that these health organizations transmit to their
workers is inferred through the training, one orienting to the task and the
other to the person, either patient, professional or pupil and therefore
seeking the common benefit.</div>