The purpose of this study was to learn the experience of diabetic clients who live health-disease phenomena in an outpatient service of endocrinology in a school hospital. The objective of the research was to obtain a comprehensive view of their way of thinking their practices and their feelings lived during treatment. I adopted SPRADLEY's ethnographic methodology wich includes: participant observation and ethnographic interview which are carried out simultaneously. Simbolic interactionism was also a strategy to clarify the themes, the validation of domains pointed out to the central theme: "The desease came to stay". The diseases metaphor emerged from this cultural universe as dangerous, impossible that destroys and stays. The disease is lived as a illness that provokes different feelings like sadness, panic, pain and death. The ernic knowledge obtained from this ethnographic research gave to nursing practice important episthemologic and onthologic bases.
Diabetes; Ethnographic research