Paper short abstract:

In this communication we want to reflect about the results of an ethnographic research made in the Aosta hospital with the terminal sick people of cancer. Which kind of healing do they have from the palliative treatments?

Paper long abstract:

In this communication we want to reflect about the results of an ethnographic research made in the Aosta hospital with the terminal sick people of cancer. Which kind of healing do they have from the palliative treatments? Do they exactly know what does "palliation" mean? And in which kind of sense we can talk about treatment as caring and not like curing, since he arrived at a study of incurable illness? Which is the perception of the sick person given by the operators and his body in decline, eaten away by the sorrow and the inactivity? Does accompany towards a "good death" mean nursing anyway? The reflection emerges by the evaluation of the interviews and the participating observation made together with the patients, relatives and operators, by the comparison with other nurse's realities, whom majority is European, with the evaluation of the current literature.