Background:Existential and spiritual thoughts are a big part of pallative care. The terms existential and spiritual can be understood in many different ways. It may mean thoughts about faith or thoughts concerning life and death. The nurse in palliative care need to have good communication skills, be responsible and be present and supportive in meeting with the patient.Aim:To describe the nurse's experiences of meeting patients' existential and spiritual thoughts in palliative care.Methods:A literature review based on 10 scientific studies have been done. The studies have been downloaded from the following scientific databases; Academic Search preimer, CINAHL Plus with   Full Text, and PubMed.

Background The aim of palliative care is to improve the quality of life for both the patient and her next of kin during the patient?s end of life. Palliative care rests on the four cornerstones managing symptoms, communication and relationship, teamwork and relative support. The nurses? task is to assess the patients? physical, mental and spiritual needs according to these four cornerstones.Aim To assess nurses? experiences of treating patients at the end of life.Method Eleven academic journals that respond to the aim has been analyzed and synthesized in a literature review in order to summarize current research on the subject.

Abstract Background: More and more people receiving palliative care in the home, leading to increased responsibility for the next of kin. Being a caregiver and at the same time next of kin is a complex situation for everyone involved. Next of kin´s everyday life changes drastically when everything revolves around the one who is seriously ill.Aim: To describe next of kin´s experiences of being caregivers to a palliative sick person at home. Method: A literature review in which eleven qualitative scientific articles were analyzed and summarized. Results: The results revealed three themes; experience of support, experience of changes in life and experience of strategies.

Today, palliative care is performed in several different areas. When the curative treatment is no longer effective the objective of the palliative care is to promote the best possible quality of life for dying patients, through an active and overall treatment. In their work nurses see death and the dying. To highlight and to reach an understanding of the significance of their work, this literature study's objective is, using Carnevali´s thoughts about health as a theoretical framework, to describe different aspects of nurses' experiences of working with dying patients within palliative care. Furthermore the occurrence of stress and possible stress factors will be examined, as well as the nurses' access to support and to established coping strategies..

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to highlight what is perceived as- and what is not perceived as- supportive and comforting, by the sick child in palliative care, and by its family. Method: Systematic literature review in which only scientific articles from the years 2001-2010 have been included. Analysis: A method inspired by qualitative content analysis was used. Results: The analysis revealed five categories of what the sick child and its family experienced as supportive and comforting - and what was perceived negatively - in the context of palliative care for children. The results showed that it was very important to have competent, dedicated and compassionate staff that not only care for the child but also see to the whole family.

Introduction: On the surgical wards in most hospitals in Sweden patients with different surgical needs are cared for. Patients with gastrointestinal conditions are, for example, nurtured alongside patients with urological disorders or patients in need of observation for head trauma. When the nurse, in addition to these patients, have to care for patients with palliative care needs can be perceived as problematic for nurse and patient alike.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore nurses' perceptions of care for patients with palliative care needs on an acute surgical ward, based on a person-centered perspective.Method: A focus group interview was conducted with the strategic selection of nurses from two acute surgical wards in a county hospital in western Sweden. The data from the interview were analyzed with qualitative directed, deductive content analysis with person-centered care as a theoretical framework. The theoretical background shows that person-centered care includes partnership, participation and structured documentation.Results: The results of this study show that even a fourth category, organization, emerged and needed to be reported.

The purpose of the literature review was to illuminate how family are responded to in health care and their experiences with a sick person in the palliative care. Ten articles dealing with the questions have been used. The questions emphasized how family experienced the response from people working within health care, their own situations and if they felt they were sufficiently informed. The results were presented from out in the questions in two themes families positive and negative experiences. The results show that for the families to have positive experiences of the respons, the situation and the information given, the working within health care have to make families feel part of the palliative care, to the extent they wish to participate..

Background: Several patients wish to die at home and relatives often become thecaregivers. This task can be a burden and the opportunity for the patient to die at homecan be overshadowed by obligations and responsibilities. Participation of relatives isoften the prerequisite to offer palliative care in the home environment. The purpose: The purpose of the study was to illuminate relatives? need of support during palliativecare in the home based care.

Background:Existential and spiritual thoughts are a big part of pallative care. The terms existential and spiritual can be understood in many different ways. It may mean thoughts about faith or thoughts concerning life and death. The nurse in palliative care need to have good communication skills, be responsible and be present and supportive in meeting with the patient.Aim:To describe the nurse's experiences of meeting patients' existential and spiritual thoughts in palliative care.Methods:A literature review based on 10 scientific studies have been done. The studies have been downloaded from the following scientific databases; Academic Search preimer, CINAHL Plus with   Full Text, and PubMed.

Aim: To find out what nurses at a hospital in central Sweden are experiencing as good care and what they believe is needed to achieve good care. To examine what barriers exist and how the work environment plays into good nursing care. Method: Descriptive and exploratory qualitative design with semi-structured interviews as the data collection method. Seven nurses, all women between the ages of 25 and 52 were interviewed at a hospital in central Sweden. An interview analysis model was used to analyze the results.

The study aims to analyze conceptions of death and dying at a clinic for palliative care, using a constructivist perspective and a discourse analytical approach. The empirical material consists of interviews with staff members, documents and photographs of the environment, taking both space and materiality into account. I conclude that the studied practice is mainly characterized by a tension between a caring discourse and a medical discourse..

This study is based on interviews with heads of unit, care staff and senior representatives from a total of six people. We have in this study directed our focus on care quality in the elderly as a concept in development. It appears, when the elderly do not have any dependents, it is even more important that staff supports some extra where no relatives are involved.Quality of life is the broader concept of good quality care and where a good quality of care is a necessary condition for a good quality of life. According to the social services care is the target that older people will live a good life and be allowed to live in a safe environment, which we intend to investigate in this study. Opportunity for greater influence should now be given to older people and their families on how interventions should be designed and implemented.

This is a study of the importance of culture for persons who are in their terminal stage of life. The purpose of my study is to find out if culture, particularly literature, can be a comfort for persons who are about to die. The study is based on interviews with people who are working in the palliative team at Norra Älvsborgs Länssjukhus (NÄL) in Trollhättan. It is also based on study of literature. It is literature about hospital library, culture in hospital treatment, palliative care, bibliotherapy and ?own stories? from dying persons.

Background: When a patient suffer from a disease and is in need of palliative care, it is normal to have existential questions and thoughts. For some patients these questions can be painful and the nurse need to have knowledge about dealing with these kind of questions and thoughts to be able to relieve and/or prevent this kind of suffering.Aim: The aim was to describe how the nurse can prevent the existential suffering among patients with palliative care.Method: A literature-based study was based on eight qualitative studies.Results: The results showed that nurses meet patients in the palliative care environment which may suffer from existential problems when their questions and thoughts don´t get answered. It showed that the most important a nurse can do is to give time to these calls and build up a safe relation to the patient. This allows the nurse to read the patients existential questions and observing possibly suffering. The result is organized in two categories "To see and confirm" and " To listen and give support" and see subcategories " Use body language", " Create reliable relationship", respond to the existential questions", "Give the patient time", " take help from others in hard situations" and "to focus on other things"Conclusion: It is easy to only focus on the physical illness while caring for a patient and believe that it is creating suffering.

This study is based on interviews with heads of unit, care staff and senior representatives from a total of six people. We have in this study directed our focus on care quality in the elderly as a concept in development. It appears, when the elderly do not have any dependents, it is even more important that staff supports some extra where no relatives are involved.Quality of life is the broader concept of good quality care and where a good quality of care is a necessary condition for a good quality of life. According to the social services care is the target that older people will live a good life and be allowed to live in a safe environment, which we intend to investigate in this study. Opportunity for greater influence should now be given to older people and their families on how interventions should be designed and implemented.