Reflection on death and dying in the ICU from a professional perspective in intensive care

Abstract

This article is a reflexive analysis with bioethical concerns on death and the process of dying in intensive care from a professional perspective, employing the bibliographic review method. It should be emphasized that despite death being part of the working context of these health professionals, it brings about feelings of impotence, indifference and even of flight and denial. The professionals demonstrate uneasiness or even attempt to hide their real feelings about death. Death is thus conceived as loss, suffering, uneasiness, unhappiness, fear, absence and the end of everything. The present study evidences the difficulties experienced by health professionals in accepting the idea of death in an ICU where an intensive struggle for life occurs. Such difficulty is the result of contemporary education and of non-humanized training, removed from an awareness of death
and the concept of the death process as part of life.