Pediatric death in the nurse daily life at work: approaching feelings and strategies

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify the meaning that pediatric death acquires in the nurse’s quotidian. This is a quali­tative, descriptive and exploratory research developed in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of a Hospital School in the Southern of Brazil. It was identified that death is a frequent event which is considered complex by those involved in the direct assis­tance to the children. The feeling of powerlessness for facing death causes suffering in the nurse who uses the spirituality to cope with the situation. It was concluded that working with death in childhood is a hard situation, once the training of nurses is dedicated to life-saving and not to issues involving human finitude, especially in childhood. Facing a death situation in childhood is a difficult task, for which the nurse must be prepared.