This article focuses on the concept of death and, in particular, the social construction of its meaning for a professional healthcare team working in an intensive hospital care unit. Thirteen professionals (six physicians and seven nurses) participated in the research, through semi-structured interviews. Despite the fact that death is part of the human cycle and is present in the daily working life of these health professionals, the denial of its existence imposed by the culture of the modern western world prevents the development of specific strategies to address this problem. Based on the Vigotski's dialectical method, three main conceptions of death were extracted from the interviews: death as a natural consequence of life; death as a biological process and death as a divine blessing. In the absence of a proper space for a more systematical approach, the social representations from the professionals on this theme are restricted to subjective opinions. In the conclusion, the need for change in the institutional context and in health education is emphasized, with a specific focus directed on death and on the process of dying.
Representations on death; Health professionals and death; Social representations; Vigotski