Introduction: Social dignity, that is based on the ontological dignity and which is a consequence of its recognition, it is as a fundamental aspect of the care for both, health professionals and patients. Especially, at the end of life, period of time spam in which the person is more vulnerable.
Objective: to explore different dignity models that have been elaborated in different healthcare contexts.
Method: A review of the literature was carried out in CINAHL, Pubmed and PsycINFO databases, introducing ″Dignity Model″ as keyword. The only limit of the search was research written in English or Spanish.
Results: seven models of dignity elaborated from different contexts and with different perspectives were identified. All of them consider dignity as an intrinsic aspect of the human being, but at the same time they take into account a subjective dimension of the dignity that depends on the persons' experience. This subjective dimension of dignity is influenced by person's perception about itself, the impact of illness in the person, the context of the person or even the behavior of the healthcare professionals.
Conclusions: all the models included in this review provide to healthcare professional a starting point to reflect and to incorporate practices that may preserve the social dignity of terminally ill patients. One of the models identified has been applied to the clinical practice with positive results.