Qualitative study, merged from the issue: how the theories and models of nursing care have being constructed, focusing on the process of building a substantive theory based on the Thesis that had as objectives to comprehend the meaning of the environment of care in the Intensive Care Unit and to construct a theoretical model about it. The method used was the Grounded Theory. Thirty-nine interviews were conducted with forty-seven differentiated subjects from three Adult Intensive Care Units in Florianópolis/SC, Santa Maria/RS and Pelotas/RS between June of 2009 and September of 2010. It was possible to construct the theory "Sustaining life in the complex care environment of the Intensive Care Unit", delimited by eight categories. Sustain life on the environment of care in the Intensive Care Unit means investing intensively in the care of patients admitted who are in an unstable situation, with the help of different technologies and skilled professionals who work in teams, coexists with relatives distressed, with stress and conflict, and the difficulty to deal with the death.
Systemic management; Health facility environment; Qualitative research; Nursing theory; Intensive Care Units
