Significado da morte para profissionais de enfermagem frente a situação de terminalidade dos pacientes em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva: revisão integrativa

Abstract

It concerns an integrative review, where articles with the following descriptors were surveyed: “Nursing”, “Death”, “Intensive Therapy Unit”, and “Thanatology”. Nursing professionals that work on Intensive Therapy Units – ITU, deal with the death phenomenon daily, therefore feelings of frustration, fear, and insecurity are created, which theoretically, shouldn't be part of their working life. For such purpose, the present study aims to: understand the meaning of death and dying for Intensive Care Therapy active nursing professionals. Methodology: literature integrative review. 10 articles that answers to the the quests intended on this study were analyzed, thereafter, 3 categories were selected: 1 – Type of Study, 2 – Nursing Role, 3 – Focus of the Study. Outcome: This survey allowed to identify that nursing professionals see death from different perspectives: death as a natural process of life, or as an avoidable process through cure, although all of them, demonstrate difficulty in coping with such phenomenon, giving away the needing of a more rigorous preparation, once the subject is poorly explored.