ICUs have become a frequent place of death for most people in the world. The death or the threat of loss of a loved one creates imbalance in the family system, giving rise to feelings of impotence, fragility and vulnerability. For the medical staff, the patient s death brings the possibility of contact with their own death and finitude processes, bringing up anguish and discomfort. The process of medicalization of death brings with it ethical and bioethical issues in the medical practice, mainly related to the limits of therapeutic action. In this scenario, conflicts between the family and the health care team may come up with some strength and without control. The objective of this study is to understand the impact of terminal illness in intensive care for the family and the medical staff. This study required an interdisciplinary discussion, in which we developed the following themes: the setting of the ICU and the integration of palliative care for end of life care in that unit; the impact of terminal illness in the family dynamics and functionality under the light of systemic family therapy and the theories about the grieving process in the family. We also discussed the aspects regarding the medical training, the stress arising from this type of work and the process of communication with families. The setting for this study was an ICU of a private hospital, midsize, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. We used the clinicalqualitative research methodology. There were six interviewed relatives of patients terminally ill and six members of the medical staff, totaling twelve participants. From the analysis of the discursive material, 11 categories emerged, 6 from the doctors speeches and 5 from the families speeches. It was found that the patient s terminal illness in the ICU is crossed by clinical, family, social, cultural, religious, economical and ethical issues, covering multiple dimensions. The imminent death of the patient promotes great anguish and suffering for the family, causing intense experiences of helplessness. Although death and dying are natural processes, they are phenomena that cause strangeness for intensive care physicians, who hope to save the patient s life as they have advanced life support equipment. We have highlighted some elements that are considered essential to a good quality of death, which are empathic, affective and effective communication among all people involved and the participation of the patient and family in the decision-making process.