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

This paper aims at understanding the way nurses experience their patient's death and their patients' dying processes. The researched subjects were nurses that have worked in an Intensive Care Unit of adults. Making use of the phenomenological methodology approach, the data was obtained through a semi-structured interview. The analysis followed the phenomenological approach in the fields of description, reduction and understanding. From such analysis the following categories emerged: the therapeutic obstinacy as a disturbance in the death and dying processes; the hard coexistence among a group of professionals with multiple functions, death and the dying processes; the work dynamics and its implications in death and the patients' dying processes. The professionals need to comprehend that death and dying are an inalienable part of the life and not a challenge to be always overcome.