Death and dying in the adult intensive care unit: feelings and strategies of nursing professionals

Abstract

Objective: To describe feelings and strategies of nursing personnel that work on adult intensive care unit facing the process of death and dying. Methodology: Integrative review of literature with bibliographical survey between 2015 and 2010 in the Health Virtual Library, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System on-line, Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Healths Science, Nursing Database and Índice Bibliográfico Español en Ciencias de la Salud. Results: After analyzing the 15 selected articles, it has emerged two categories: Experienced Feelings, split up in personal feelings such as affliction, anxiety, sadness, empathy and relieve, and professionals’ feelings such as failure, impotence, frustration, unsuccessfulness, and guilt; and Confrontation Strategies, segmented in two subtopics, personal strategies, and professionals’ strategies. Conclusions: Nursing professionals experience negative feelings that cause emotional harm and develop confrontation strategies that, when badly administrated, generate gaps in the caring process.

Keywords

• nursing personnel
• intensive care unit
• feelings
• death
• attitude facing death