Résumé
Introduction: the general practitioners often face their patients’ death. The main objective of this study was to explore their representations about their own end of life and their own death, the secondary objective was to explore the influence of these representations upon their personal life and their professional practice.Methods: qualitative study based on half-guided individual interviews of general practitioners with liberal practice in the départements of Gard and Hérault, with semio-pragmatic analysis.Results: 13 interviews were led from October 2018 to January 2019, lasting 51 minutes on average. The general practitioners’ representations on their death come onto the unknown and all the existentials or dimensions of life experience. The wished death is a peaceful death after having led a busy life, but the widely-shared fear of pathologic aging, handicap and agony, seen as a loss of dignity and of freedom, often makes wish for oneself an induced and controlled death. Speaking about death is hard for everyone and especially for the practitioner. Dealing with death requires to adapt to the patient and to the context, it also means to be torn between what someone is and someone’s professional practice.Conclusion: in order to improve the general practitioners’ experience and their way of dealing with patients at end of life, it could be useful to reinforce their training in the fields of philosophy, psychology, communication and technical and legal tools for the end of life, and their support by talk groups.