[Nursing students' reflections on death and dying]

This article refers to the first phase of a survey on nursing students' representations on death and dying. The research has an exploratory character and was carried out with first year students of the undergraduate course in Nursing of the Federal University of São Paulo. Its objectives were to know the impressions of the students concerning the theme "death and dying" and to give subsidies for the second phase of the survey. It was carried through a dynamic with a guiding question, as part of the curricular program of the discipline Psychology Applied to Health. For the interpretation of the data the method of the Analysis of Content was used, and the following categories were obtained: fear of death; concepts; attitude in the face of death and dying; belief as an intervening element.