Expected deaths at home - a qualitative study of collaboration.

Background: It is a goal of health policy that more patients with serious illness should be able to die at home. This study elucidates the collaboration between healthcare personnel and undertakers immediately after the death, the dignity of the deceased patient and the bereaved relatives is challenged.

Material And Method: The study is primarily based on five focus group interviews with undertakers, GPs, nurses and healthcare workers in homecare nursing, a total of 23 participants in an urban municipality.

Experiences and challenges of home care nurses and general practitioners in home-based palliative care - a qualitative study.

Background: Norway has one of the lowest home death rates in Europe. However, it is the health authorities´ ambition to increase this by facilitating palliative care at home. The aim of this study was to achieve more insight, through home care nurses and general practitioners, of conditions that facilitate or hamper more time at home and more home deaths for patients with terminal disease and short life expectancy.

Living with advanced cancer and short life expectancy: patients' experiences with managing medication.

Our aim is to explore patients' experiences of using medicines when they are living with far-advanced cancer and short life expectancy; our method is a qualitative interview study. At a daycare centre at a palliative clinic in Norway, we interviewed 15 patients with advanced incurable cancer with multiple metastases who had a short life expectancy. We found that in taking their medications, they feared losing control, becoming addicted, or suffering harmful effects.