title: [Psychological experience of health care professionals in intensive care unit: a qualitative and exploratory study].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Study the subjective and emotional experience of health care professionals in intensive care unit in front of sources of professional stress connected to the emergency and to the gravity of the pathologies of hospitalized patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  A clinical interview was proposed to health care professionals of an intensive care unit during which they had to develop their personal feeling about the organization of the work and their management of the most stressful emotional situations. All interviews were entirely recorded and rewritten. Then, they were the object of a procedure of coding and a thematic analysis was detailed with the consensus of several individuals.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Eighteen professionals agreed to participate in this research. The analysis of these clinical interviews showed a strong feeling of pressure in works as being mainly focused on the necessity of control the procedures and the technical means involved in intensive care unit and in the strong emotional load due to deaths of patients and to the pain of families. The management of the death and its conditions appears as a major and central difficulty.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The discussion approaches the question of the feeling of pressure at works and its various items by underlining the interpersonal variations of these experiences, then the question of the emotional adaptation through the individual and collective defensive strategies organized to cope with these various situations.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de psychopathologie et de psychologie médicale, esplanade Érasme, pôle AAFE, université de Bourgogne, 21000 Dijon, France. Khadija.Chahraoui@u-bourgogne.fr
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Chahraoui
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bioy
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cras
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gilles
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Laurent
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Valache
authors.forename: J-P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Quenot
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003142:Communication; D003422:Critical Care / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D008297:Male; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology