Problem statement: In order to support the needs of the staff working in discrete areas of nursing, the attitudes, behaviors and needs of the group must first be articulated. Unfortunately, there has been little research conducted to understand the culture of what it is that health care workers think and feel and why they make the choices they do in their working environment and also why they chose to leave the environment. Specifically, what do intensive care clinicians think about the work they do when managing end-of-life care in this technical, highly skilled environment. The focus of an ethnographic study conducted in an Australian hospital in 2007 was to describe the attitudes, behaviors and social conscience of this group whilst they provided end-of-life care. Conclusion: Staff were unable to control many factors that impact on the capacity of professional practice within the intensive care environment. In response to this limited control, staff developed tactics for managing the varying levels of expected clinical service delivery associated with varying possible outcome for each individual patient admission. This research garnered three discrete groups of coping strategies: physical, social and psychological. Future research may demonstrate capacity to engage in such coping strategies has a direct link to clinical longevity.
