Meaning of the death / dying process for entering nursing students

This is a qualitative study, based on Heidegger's existential phenomenology, with the purpose of revealing the meaning of death / dying for freshmen students of the nursing program. The study was developed in a public university in the northwest of Parana, Brazil, between August and October 2010, and 33 entering students from a Nursing program were interviewed. The following existential themes emerged from the phenomenological analysis: "Understanding death as a difficult process to be understood"; "Understanding death as a natural process"; and "Perceiving death as a passage to another life". The present study allowed to understand that knowledge and death are entangled in the temporality and the historicity of every being, which requires a scientific, ethical and philosophical understanding of the death / dying phenomenon so that the scholar may prepare for the humanized care of the patient and his/her family.