[The head nurse faced with nurses' rites of passages].

The caregivers, faced with a death, have repetitive and meaningless attitudes. The concept of rite, developed by Pierre CAZE-NEUVE, reveals that a rite can be characterized by three elements: stereotyped, repetitive and meaningless. The passage rite is made up of three steps: separation, margin and aggregation. The passage rites are defence mechanisms installed by the caregivers to fight against an element which they do not master, the death of a patient. The role of the head nurse can come in three forms: a protection role in order to give caregivers good working conditions, an attention faced with the limits of the rite as well as a vigilance faced with negative rites.