Andersson P, Peter M. Nurses experience of providing palliative care at home. A literature review. Degree Project 15 credit points in nursing. Malmö University, Faculty of Health and Society, Department of Care Science, 2021.
Background: Palliative care is provided when there is no cure for the patient's illness and more people are choosing to receive palliative care in their home. Palliative care focuses on supporting the patient whilst ensuring that their symptoms are relieved in a timely manner and is individually adapted to the patient and the relatives are encouraged to be involved in the palliative care. Furthermore, it is crucial that the patient know they are directly involved in the decisions that impact their end-of-life experience.
Aim: The purpose is to describe the nurse's experience of providing palliative care at home.
Method: The project was carried out as a literature study with a qualitative study design. The databases used in the literature searches were Cinahl and PubMed. The results of the literature study are based on 10 scientific articles that have been reviewed with the help of SBU:s review template for qualitative studies.
Results: 3 main categories emerged; challenges at work, information and support for relatives, the need for a god cooperation. These main categories were formed by the 9 subcategories; the need of knowledge, flexibility at work, emotional strain, to face ethical dilemmas, to create participation, create dialogue with relatives, postmortem, collaboration with nurse-colleagues, collaboration with physicians
Conclusion: Working in palliative care as a nurse can be stressful and affect the nurse negatively. It also requires a lot of commitment and knowledge from the nurse as they have a lot of responsibility. It is crucial that there is a clear and concise line of communication between all the parties involved in order to givethe patient the best end-of-life experience as possible.