Palliative care for pancreatic cancer - patients´ experiences
To receive a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer can lead to a tremendous change in a person?s life. Thoughts regarding death may cause a personal crisis which can have negative influences on the patient?s social, mental and spiritual state. Most people with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed in a late stage of the disease. Therefore, palliative care is often one of the options that are offered to patients. Moreover, to be able to provide patients with nursing care and tend to their needs, it is very important to see them as unique individuals. The purpose with the literature review was to illustrate the experiences of palliative nursing care of patients with pancreatic cancer. A systematic literature review of scientific articles was performed. The study showed that patients? experiences of need for information, patients? need for time, support and personal relations, patients? experiences of hope as well as patients? need for symptom control were of importance in palliative nursing care.