Experience of intensive care unit nurses dealing with death and the dying

Abstract

Current analysis deals with the manner nurses experience the death process and dying patients. Subjects were ICU nurses. The phenomenological method was employed and data collected through an interview were foregrounded on the basic question: What does it mean to deal with death and with dying patients in your care? Categories indicate that the dying and death experience is an issue that pervades the following topics: 1. therapeutic obstinacy as a pathway in the dying and death process; 2. the difficult living with a poly-professional team and the dying and death process; 3. the dynamics of work and its implications in dying patients and in the death of patients. Health professionals should learn that death and dying are not always a challenge to be overcome but an inalienable part of human life.