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..

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.

Insomnia is getting more prevalent with age, both because of natural changes in the sleep pattern and because of increased morbidity. It can cause dysfunctioning and sedation during the day. Therefore it is often treated with hypnotics. It is possible though that hypnotics can cause daytime sleepiness as well, not to mention increased risk of falling and fractures because of sedation and prolonged reaction time. Benzodiazepines and benzodiazepine related drugs, the subjects of this study, are commonly used as hypnotics.

Background: Palliative care is a type of care, which does not cure but eases the suffering caused by the disease. The goal of palliative care is not to extend or shorten the patient's life, but to relieve pain and distressing symptoms and to promote the patients? quality of life (QOL). QOL can be understood as a subjective sense of happiness of existence, which means that the patient is experiencing life when her total life situation is consistent with her ??wishes.

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.

AbstractBackground: Relation means the relationship between two parts. By creating a good relation between nurse and patient you can conduce a better caring. Aim: The aim of the study was to illustrate the relation within palliative care from nurse- patient perspective. Method: The study is a literature review where ten articles were analysed with qualitative content analysis. Results: The findings showed that knowledge, communication, continuity, silence and availability were the most important thing for the nurse in the relationship.

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..

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 was performed in order to investigate the difficulty in diagnosing retrobulbar disease with ultrasound. A retrospective study was accomplished to investigate the use of ultrasound in patients with suspected retrobulbar problems, and how often the examination is diagnostic. The computer based patient files, at the University of Agricultural Science in Uppsala, were searched for dogs with suspected retrobulbar disease. During 1999-01-01-2004-04-14, 14 patients fulfilling the search criteria were found. The patient records were studied, and the written reports from the ultrasound examinations were compared with the printed pictures from the examinations.

The aim: was to describe and compare a group of experts and critical care nurses' agreement in detecting delirium in intubated, ventilator treated patients with sedation / analgesia, before and after an in house training intervention with the instrument Confusion Assessment Method for the Intensive Care Unit (CAM-ICU).Method: A quasi-experimental study, one group pretest - posttest design. A convenience sample of 17 critical care nurses in a general intensive care unit included. To detect delirium the instrument CAM-ICU was used, 21 paired tests before and 22 after an educational intervention.Main Results: The results showed that after an in house training intervention sensitivity and kappa coefficient improved of the characteristic 1 "acute onset and fluctuating course," an improvement that was significant. In other features, and overall values were signs of numerical improvement and deterioration in sensitivity, specificity and kappa coefficient but no significant change.Conclusion: Implementing a new instrument for detecting delirium in clinical practice requires education and follow-up. A small sample of critical care nurses with varying ability to use the new instrument and the fact that patients' status may change rapidly making it difficult to draw any conclusions from this study.

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.

Background: In previous studies on the subject hope it has been revealed that hope is an important condition for the experience of health, quality of life and well-being. In the literature hope is described as a great support in life that is vital for a person's life and for how the person manages to become afflicted with a fatal disease. Within palliative care the 6S: s is a person-centered model for care that is directed towards the promotion of patient´s participation, relief from suffering and enablement of well-being and support of the patient and his or her family members. Aim: To describe how patients find hope in their situation in palliative care, and to examine whether there is an interaction between the different dimensions of 6 S: s model and with patients' experiences of hope. Methods: This degree project is literature study.

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.

 The purpose of this study was to investigate registered nurses experiences about giving support to relatives to patients within palliative home care. This study was descriptive with qualitative approach. The data collection was made in the form of semi structured qualitative interviews which took place in a Swedish city of medium size, in an area for palliative homecare. Six registrated nurses were interviewed which all gave informed consent. The study suffered no losses and permission from the director of the concerned department had been given prior to the start of this study.

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.