Death and dying in the nurse formation process.

Abstract

Death is one of the great mysteries of life. We live in a death denying-society. This aim of the present qualitative study was to see if undergraduate Nursing students are prepared to face death and dying during training. Seven students enrolled in the discipline “Supervised Training II”, the last discipline of the course were interviewed using a semi-structured script, and the collected data were submitted to content analysis. The following categories were discussed: facing death in daily life, reaction to death, and dying in training. It was observed that the process of death and dying is not approached in a manner that supplies the students’ needs in routine situations that require them to provide dying patients humane conditions to die.