AbstractBackground: Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide and accounted for 7.6 million deaths, about 13% of all deaths, in 2008. Several factors can affect patients' quality of life such as physical and psychological symptoms, relationship to people around and the environment. In palliative care professionals need to have good knowledge in order to improve patient quality of life and to give them as good a life as possible in the final stages of life.Aim: The purpose of this overview study is to describe the experiences of quality of life in patients with incurable cancer.Method: We conducted an overview study that was based on ten scientific articles. All articles are qualitative studies, from the year 1995 - 2011, and are from Sweden, Finland, UK, Canada and the USA. Qualitative analysis was used to group the various themes and subthemes for overview study purpose.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate the care personnel's experience, and thoughts concerning the elderlies use of sedatives and sleeping tablets. The purpose was also to make a comparison between different forms of living, in an attempt to find out if the form of living in itself was a factor that affected the use of sedatives and sleeping-tablets.In order to investigate this, the main questions of this essay became:- To what extent do the patients use sedatives and sleeping tablets?- What is the care personnel's experience of, and thoughts about the patients' use of sedatives and sleeping tablets?To obtain answers to my questions I interviewed care personnel working at different types of homes for elderly people and working with elderly people still living at home.I came to the conclusion that where you live may also have an influence on the use of sedatives and sleeping tablets. This could be seen when a group of elderly people lived together, and some of them were suffering from dementia. Then it could happen that the elderly with dementia where given sedatives and sleeping tablets, not just in order to calm them, but also to give the others a better environment to live in..

Background: Multiple myeloma is a malignant incurable cancer disease associated with severe chronic pain. The nurse has several important roles in the management of patients with multiple myeloma. This study focuses on nurse´s roles including the caring of pain relief.Aim: The aim of this study was to elucidate the nurse?s role in giving care to patients with multiple myeloma and associated chronic pain.Method: This literature study was based on scientific articles.Results: The nurse is in a key position to facilitate ongoing adequate pain and psychosocial assessment of patients with multiple myeloma. The study presents ways of relieving pain and suffering via different ways of caring management.

Aim: To describe nurses' experiences providing end of life care to patients. Method Descriptive literature study, 15 articles were included. The search was made in PubMed, CINAHL and by manual search. The articles were reviewed, analyzed and summarized. Results: For newly graduated nurses? experience in end of life care proved to be something new, developing, difficult to manage and frightening, but expected in the profession.

Introduction: Sexual abuse is more common than statistics show; the number of unrecorded cases is high. Sexual abuse is hard to deal with, it is associated with taboo and shame and at the same time it is a trauma to the one who has been abused which will effect the rest of that persons life. Aim: The aim of this literature review is to describe men and women?s experiences of being sexually abused. Method: A literature review, inspired by Friberg (2006), was conducted.

Every year about 30000 people have a stroke. It is caused by either a bleeding or a blood clot, and depending on where the damage is, the patient can get different types of difficulties following after the stroke. About 40 % of all stroke patients sufferfrom some kind of speech and/or communication difficulty, like aphasia or dysarthria. As hospital staff it´s important to know how to communicate with these people, to get a deeper understanding regards their needs.Aim:The aim of this study is to out of a patient's perspectivedescribeexperiences ofcommunication difficulties that can follow after a stroke.Method:A content analysis with a qualitative approach was used to analyse five autobiographies.Results:The result showed in what way stroke patients experienced their communication difficulties, and how they felt about the hospital staffs treatment related to their communication difficulties. During the analysis two major themes emerged: suffering and wellbeing.

Regardless of what discipline nurses work in, wound care is one of the tasks. Caring for wounds involves early detection of signs of infection, in order to avoid complication. Wound infection extends suffering for the patient and causes unnecessary costs for society. The aim was to describe how nurses can identify infection in wounds. Method: The design of the study was a literature review, where13 scientific articles were examined and analyzed.

Hand hygiene compliance is one of the most important factors to prevent healtcare associated infections (HAI), which can cause unnessesary suffering, prelonged insitutional care, invalidity and higher mortality rate. It has been shown that despite regulations for hygiene compliances in healthcare, these are used unadequately. HAI affects 5-10 % of all patients in industrailized countries, in development countries the number is estimated to be up to 20 times higher. The aim of this study was to illustrate healthcareworkers hygiene compliances in patient care at a rural healthcarecentre in western India. Participant observation was used as a method, fieldnotes was taken for qualitative analysis.

Regardless of what discipline nurses work in, wound care is one of the tasks. Caring for wounds involves early detection of signs of infection, in order to avoid complication. Wound infection extends suffering for the patient and causes unnecessary costs for society. The aim was to describe how nurses can identify infection in wounds. Method: The design of the study was a literature review, where13 scientific articles were examined and analyzed.

Background: The majority of patients requiring medical attention experience some degree of pain. The nurses´ assessment of pain is crucial in reducing the patients suffering in a proper and timely manner. Previous studies have shown that the treatment of pain in a emergency situation is poorly managed. The patients´ pain experience is often under assessed and undertreated which leads to increased suffering for the patient. This results in higher costs for the health care system due to prolonged hospitalization.

The aim of this study was to investigate the leaving care services provided to youth leaving residential care in Sweden. Through the use of qualitative research interviews residential care workers perception of what practical and emotional needs youth leaving care have, and whether current aftercare services meet these needs, were examined. The study further sought to compare the swedish and english leaving care services. The main findings of the study were that the residential care workers interviewed expressed that they had a good working relationship with the local social services and that they through the residential care services were able to provide some degree of aftercare. They further identified loneliness as the most prominent emotional need of youth had after leaving care.

Many organizational changes have been accomplished in elder care since the 1980's and many of those have been influenced by market mechanisms. The purpose of this study is to examine how the implementation of these market mechanisms has affected three important aspects in the work situation for personnel. These aspects are, demand, control and support. To attain the purpose of this study, five qualitative interviews with home care personnel have been carried out. The interview material has been analyzed and structured with the help of Karasek and Theorells demand-control-support model.

The study aimed to evaluate picture communication during clinical as-sessment and intervention procedures in paediatric care. As part of the project KomHIT (Augmentative communication in paediatric health care settings) care professionals at different care units were provided with education and designed pictorial supports. These consisted of appointment letters with pictorial support, visual schedules and communication boards with both general and specific vocabulary. Care professionals and parents to children with and without communication disabilities participated. Survey data from care professionals and parents at five care units was supplemented with qualitative data from an interview with a multiprofessional group at one of the care units.

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 study deals with the distinct difference in media attention the earthquake-disaster in Haiti and the flood-disaster in Pakistan got in 2010. There may be many reasons to this divergence, but this study focuses on how news articles can create compassion.   This study, with its critical perspective, examines how two daily papers in Sweden portray the suffering of the victims of the catastrophes in Haiti and Pakistan, and create compassion for them. Furthermore it asks the question who benefits from the newspaper?s description of human suffering in the third world.   The result shows that the manner of which Swedish daily newspapers report from the catastrophe in Haiti creates an emotional involvement, which most likely leads to compassion. Furthermore it shows potential to lead the readers to identify with the suffering people in Haiti.   The Swedish daily newspapers report of the catastrophe in Pakistan on the other hand, does not involve the reader on an emotional level, but gives them the role of a spectator.