The target of the article presented here was to find how the nurses in the Czech Republic identify the anxiety about death in patients and whether they use the nursing diagnosis "Death anxiety" in nursing plans for patients. The group included 468 general nurses from hospices, oncological and haemato-oncological departments, institutions for long-term treatment, old people´s homes and homecare agencies in the Czech Republic. A semi-structured, non-standardized questionnaire with Likert scales was employed. The research was implemented from January to May 2011. The results were processed by the use of the descriptive statistics, squared chi test with the Bonferroni significance correction and Mann-Whitney test. Almost half the total number of nurses (47.0%) reported that they relatively frequently encounter patients suffering from anxiety about death at their working site. Signals resulting in the identification of the anxiety about death were categorized depending on diagnostic elements of the nursing diagnosis "Death anxiety" (00147) in the NANDA International taxonomy. The following diagnostic elements occurred most frequently: "reports negative thoughts related to death and dying" (38.7%), "reports deep sadness" (36.8%) and "discussions on topic of death" (32.9%). Only 42.3% of nurses reported that they use the diagnosis "Death anxiety" in their nursing plans. In the diagnostic element: "reports negative thoughts related to death and dying", there was a significant dependence between the rate of occurrence and type of the institution (p<0.0001). In hospices, there was a significantly higher rate of the frequency compared to other institutions. A statistically significant association was furthermore demonstrated between the rate of the frequency of the diagnostic element "reports negative thoughts related to death and dying" and experience of nurses taking care of patients suffering from the death anxiety (p = 0.002). Beyond the category of diagnostic elements of the NANDA International taxonomy, 19% of nurses also mentioned further signals, which were combined into the category "fear of loneliness". Key words: death anxiety-nursing diagnosis-NANDA-patient at terminal stage of disease Souhrn Cílem článku bylo zjistit, jak sestry v ČR identifikují u pacienta úzkost ze smrti a zda používají ošetřovatelskou diagnózu "Úzkost ze smrti" v ošetřovatelských plánech pacientů. Soubor tvořilo 468 všeobecných sester z hospiců, onkologií/hematoonkologií, LDN, domovů pro seniory a agentur domácí péče v ČR. Byl použit polostrukturovaný, nestandardizovaný dotazník