Intensive care environments are characterized by high levels of technical and emotional complexity, where nursing staff routinely encounter patient mortality. Throughout this process, the quality of care delivered is directly shaped by nurses’ viewpoints on what constitutes a good death, as well as their overall attitudes and practical behaviors regarding end-of-life care. Investigating how these components interact is critical for advancing the standards of holistic end-of-life care. A descriptive and correlational research design was used to explore the connections among intensive care nurses’ perceptions of a good death, their corresponding end-of-life care attitudes and behaviors, and the underlying factors influencing these variables. The required sample size was computed using a standard statistical formula for a known population size, resulting in the selection of 136 intensive care nurses via random sampling. The research took place in Trabzon, Türkiye, from March to October 2022. Assessment tools included a Nurse Information Form, the Scale of Attitudes and Behaviors of Intensive Care Nurses Toward End-of-Life Care, and the Good Death Scale. Statistical analysis of the data was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 23. The analysis demonstrated a moderate, positive, and statistically significant correlation between a nurse’s perception of a good death and their end-of-life care attitudes and behaviors (r = 0.425; P < 0.001). Higher levels of positive perception within the psychosocial-spiritual and clinical subdimensions were associated with more favorable attitudes toward end-of-life care. Conversely, the personal control subdimension displayed no significant correlation. Nurses who interacted more regularly with dying patients and those who experienced physiological or psychological impacts during the process exhibited more positive attitudes. While longer general professional experience was linked to positive shifts in clinical perceptions, specific intensive care tenure yielded no statistically significant variations. No meaningful relationships were detected between sociodemographic traits and the observed outcomes. This investigation demonstrated that intensive care nurses’ perception of a good death is immediately reflected in their end-of-life caregiving processes. The evidence indicates that the notion of a “good death” must be evaluated beyond basic clinical boundaries to incorporate ethical, cultural, and emotional frameworks. This underscores the need to implement multi-faceted, experience-centered strategies within nursing curricula and professional development programs.
