The study aims to investigate the impact of patient death on their caring nurses, and to determine such risk factors associated with nurses' response to patient death as personal characteristics, work experience and attitudes to death, etc. 303 nurses of a medical center in central Taiwan were recruited as interviewees for a semi-structured questionnaire inclusive of Death Attitude Profile (DAP), response scale to patient death and basic characteristics. The average impact score from patient death was 94.96 (with a sum score of 155); the most affected was grief response, the ranked second was to be afraid of providing death-related nursing, the ranked third was the effect on daily living, the least affected was to nursing profession. The impact of patient death was negatively associated with age and working years in the present position, as grief response with working years in the present position, effect on nursing profession and cumulative years in nursing service. Those who have never cared for dying patients were significantly much more impacted in terms of effect on nursing profession than those who have. Those who experienced different number of patient deaths were significantly different in their perceived impact on nursing profession. Death attitudes, either fear of death and dying, approaching oriented death acceptance, or escape oriented death acceptance, were proportional to impact from patient death. In addition, out of the subjects, 212 (70.0%)had experienced patient death in the past year. Among those with such an experience, 139 (65.6%) recognized the effect of patient death, while 73 (34.4%) denied it. The present study would be helpful to nurses' adaptation to impact from patient death.