This study identifies and analyses the social representation of death according to a group of intensive care physicians, with the aim of comparing such representations with the results obtained from a clinic's medical staff. Semi-structured interviews were thus carried out with 27 physicians working at Intensive Care Units (ICUs) at a university hospital affiliated to a Brazilian federal higher education institution. The subject was further analysed based on the concept of Social Representations and on the Discourse of the Collective Subject (DCS) qualiquantitative methodology. Results demonstrate that the context of an ICU promotes efforts toward the naturalisation and objectification of death, although this does not neutralise feelings experienced by intensive care physicians. The latter acknowledge their lack of training on dealing with situations involving death, claiming assistance and support from psychologists and psychoanalysts. They defend the ICU as a privileged space for contact and the development of personal and professional behaviours regarding death, throughout the medical undergraduate course. Therefore, due to the uniqueness of the ICU context, physicians and medical students possess the ability to witness the reaches and limits of medical intervention in light of the inexorable nature of human death, and also to better formulate their opinions on the subject.
Higher Education; Death; Medicine; Intensive Care Therapy