Palliative care and the intensive care nurses: feelings that endure.

Objective:: to know the feelings of nurses regarding palliative care in adult intensive care units.

Method:: qualitative study, which adopted the theoretical framework of Social Representations, carried out with 30 nurses of the state of Santa Catarina included by Snowball sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted from April to August 2015, organized and analyzed through the Collective Subject Discourse.

Results:: the results showed how central ideas are related to feelings of comfort, frustration, insecurity and anguish, in addition to the feeling that the professional training and performance are focused on the cure.

Conclusion:: the social representations of nurses regarding the feelings related to palliative care are represented mainly by negative feelings, probably as consequence of the context in which care is provided.