The study aimed to understand what the knowledge, referred by students as reconstructed, expresses within the curricular internship in spaces of basic health care. The study analyzes the contribution of the internship in the education of nursing students toward their professional role within that context of health care. This is an exploratory and qualitative study. Two focal groups were utilized for data gathering. Fourteen students from two public higher education institutions hosting internship programs in the city of Salvador, BA, participated in the groups between August and September 2008. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis. The study revealed that the internship provided the reconstruction of significant experiences for the professional role of the nurse in basic care, such as better comprehension of: the complexity of the work in the context of basic care; health planning; decision making; and a better foundation for clinical practice, being this latter one, the most emphasized by the students. The analysis also illustrated the limits of the curricular internship related to the teaching-service disintegration; few opportunities to practice multi-professional and intersectoral work; not enough knowledge about health observation, permanent health education activities, and social control procedures. Perception of basic care, as revealed by the student statements, the basic literature of the internship, and the range of possible activities in the fields of practice, were illustrated as very restricted. This constitutes, yet another limit in the development of the internship, and consequently, in the education of the nurse in the context of basic health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]