Abstract
This study aims to understand how nursing assistants from a university hospital would act in cases of end-of-life patients provided with advance directives. This is a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study conducted with 20 nurses from a public university hospital in the South of Brazil. Data were collected from November 2017 to January 2018, using semi-structured individual interviews, and submitted to discursive textual analysis, from which we established three categories: acceptance of death in the hospital context as prerequisite for complying with the directives; patient autonomy, respecting limits; advance healthcare directives: from (lack of) knowledge to the possibility of professional support. In conclusion, nurses consider that advance healthcare directives facilitate fulfilling patient autonomy, besides offering support to the nursing professional.
Nurses; Advance directives; Hospital care; Ethics, nursing; Personal Autonomy