The nursing professional encountered more competition and challenge in present. Therefore, the Taiwan Ministry of Education built the essential professional core competencies for promoting the quality of nursing education.Purpose: This study was to explore nursing students' self-perceived of professional core competencies display in hospice clinical practice. Material and Method: Qualitative research is taken as main method. Fourteen baccalaureate nursing programs students, who had chosen the course of hospice nursing care for one semester and participated for hospice clinical practice, were interviewed. Ritchie and Spencer's framework of thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview data. Results: Nursing students self-perceived that the easiest achievement of the professional core competencies were caring, accountability and ethics. Participants believed that they have tried the best to practice the art of nursing care, and to develop life strengths. However, the most difficult professional core competencies were basic biomedical science, and critical thinking, because the gap existed between the knowledge of basic biomedical science and patients' healthy problems. Conclusions: This study displayed successful and insufficient professional core competencies for nursing students, and to offer the guideline in hospice lecture and clinical practice.