[Living with pain: an existential focus].

In the routine of a hospital, during my nursing practice of providing care to patients with pain, it was shown to me as reaching beyond a biological sphere included in an existential dimension. Something in this experience disturbed me and I felt the need to understand these people suffering from pain, asking how they understand their pain and what is the meaning of experiencing painful chronic situations. In the attempt to find a way to obtain such understanding, I searched for some ideas stemming from phenomenology.