Aims and objectives: To explore how nurses, across various health systems, describe their role in providing palliative care for patients with life‐threatening illnesses.Background: Despite the fact that nurses make up the largest group of healthcare professionals, little is known about their role in palliative care, across health services.Design: A qualitative systematic review of studies.Methods: A search was made for relevant articles, published between January 2000–June 2016. Twenty‐eight articles were selected and analysed using thematic synthesis.Results: The themes that emerged from the analysis were as follows: Being available, which gave nurses a pivotal role in palliative care and paved the way for Being a coordinator of care for patients and relatives, as well as for other health personnel. Doing what's needed was to handle an enormous breadth of activities, always in a holistic framework of understanding. Being attentively present and dedicated as well as using flexible and nontraditional methods was essential in the role. Standing in demanding situations dealt with lack of time and resources, limited legitimacy, handling ethical dilemmas and being in need of support and knowledge.Conclusion: Being available as well as a coordinator characterises the nurse's role across healthcare systems. The nurse acts as a link between different levels of health care, between different professions and between patient and family, which contribute to ensuring the quality of care to the individual patient. The review illuminates that the basic tenets of care in nursing are also fundamental to the nurse's role in palliative care. To be able to give individually tailored palliative care to patients with life‐threatening illnesses and their relatives, the nurses need all their knowledge of basic nursing. Situations challenge nurses in practical, relational and moral dimensions of care and make demands on their role in a comprehensive way.Relevance to clinical practice: Nurses need knowledge and training, guidance and support to fulfil their role.

Aim and objectives: To review the literature on Nordic women's lived experiences and quality of life (QoL) after gynaecological cancer treatment.Background: While incidence and survival are increasing in all groups of gynaecological cancers in the Nordic countries, inpatient hospitalisation has become shorter in relation to treatment. This has increased the need for follow‐up and rehabilitation.Design: Integrative literature review using the Equator PRISMA guidelines.Methods: The review was selected, allowing inclusion of both experimental and nonexperimental research. The search included peer‐reviewed articles published 1995–2017. To frame the search strategy, we applied the concept of rehabilitation, which holds a holistic perspective on health.Results: Fifty‐five articles were included and were contextualised within three themes. Physical well-being in a changed body encompasses bodily changes comprising menopausal symptoms, a changed sexual life, complications in bowels, urinary tract, lymphoedema and pain, bodily‐based preparedness and fear of recurrence. Mental well-being as a woman deals with questioned womanliness, the experience of revitalised values in life, and challenges of how to come to terms with oneself after cancer treatment. Psychosocial well-being and interaction deals with the importance of having a partner or close person in the process of coming to terms with oneself after cancer. Furthermore, the women needed conversations with health professionals around the process of coping with changes and late effects, including intimate and sensitive issues.Conclusion: Years after gynaecological cancer, women have to deal with fundamental changes and challenges concerning their physical, mental and psychosocial well‐being. Future research should focus on how follow‐up programmes can be organised to target the multidimensional aspects of women's QoL. Research collaboration across Nordic countries on rehabilitation needs and intervention is timely and welcomed.Relevance to clinical practice: To ensure that all aspects of cancer rehabilitation are being addressed, we suggest that the individual woman is offered an active role in her follow‐up.

Aims and objectives: To examine the prevalence of cancer‐related fatigue in women treated for various types of gynaecological cancers and, for these cancers, to assess fatigue in relation to distress, health‐related quality of life, demography and treatment characteristics.Background: Advances in treatment of cancer have improved the likelihood of survival. Consequently, there are a growing number of patients who become survivors after cancer and who face side effects even years after treatment. One of the most frequently reported side effects across all types and stages of the disease is cancer‐related fatigue.Design: A descriptive cross‐sectional study.Methods: One hundred and twenty women treated for gynaecological cancers who were participants in an intervention study were included. Fatigue, psychological distress, health‐related QoL and demographics were assessed by questionnaires. Disease and treatment characteristics were extracted from medical records.Results: Cancer‐related fatigue was reported in 53% of the women treated for gynaecological cancers, with a higher proportion in the group of cervical cancer, followed by ovarian cancer. Younger participants reported fatigue more frequently than older participants. When adjusting for age, the type of cancer a woman experiences was shown to have little impact on her risk of experiencing fatigue. The participants with fatigue reported higher levels of anxiety and depression than participants without fatigue. There was a relationship between fatigue and quality of life as measured by SF‐36 domains.Conclusion: The findings underscore the importance of screening for fatigue, patient education and symptom management. This should be included in a standard procedure during treatment and follow‐up. Both somatic and psychological aspects of fatigue should be emphasised.Relevance to clinical practice: The findings imply the need for health personnel to have focus on fatigue during the entire cancer trajectory of women after gynaecological cancers, as well as the need for screening, information, guidance and symptom management.

In this article we elaborate on how living in a changed female body after gynecological cancer is experienced 5 to 6 years after treatment. Based on a phenomenological life-world perspective, 32 interviews with 16 women showed that changes involved dealing with unfamiliarity related to experiences of bodily emptiness, temperature fluctuations, sex-life consequences, vulnerability, and uncertainty. Findings are discussed in relation to Svenaeus's perspective on illness as an unhomelike being-in-the-body and being-in-the-world. This perspective could spur health personnel to improve patient information and dialogue and thus facilitate a process leading to more familiarity and homelikeness for patients during treatment and follow-up.