Meaning of work and the returning process after breast cancer: a longitudinal study of 56 women.

Background: An increasing number of women survive breast cancer and a majority return to work. However, findings based on mean values may conceal individual processes that need to be better understood to discuss meaningful rehabilitation.

Aim: The purpose of this study is to describe the sick-leave pattern of a group of Swedish women with primary breast cancer but foremost to explore their ideas about what motivates and discourages their return to work.

The impact of breast cancer on living an everyday life 4.5-5 years post-diagnosis - a qualitative prospective study of 39 women.

Background: The survival of women with breast cancer has improved. There are many studies available describing different aspects of how the illness and its treatment affect the women. Usually these studies are cross-sectional and focus on assessments of a sample of women at a single point in time during post-treatment.

Home abortion - experiences of male involvement.

Objective: To gain knowledge about the male partner's experience of being present during an induced home abortion.

Methods: Twenty-three couples, whose male partner had been present when the woman aborted at home, were interviewed one to two weeks post-abortion.

Results: Each of the men supported his partner in her decision to have a home abortion, as this gave him the possibility of being near and of caring for her needs on the expulsion day.

Home abortion implies radical changes for women.

Objective: To gain knowledge about women's experiences, views and reactions regarding having a home abortion (medical abortion with the use of misoprostol at home).

Methods: One hundred women were interviewed one week post-abortion; this yielded both quantitative and qualitative data.

Results: The overwhelming majority of the women experienced wellbeing and were satisfied with their choice of abortion method.

'Admission into a helping plan': a watershed between positive and negative experiences in breast cancer.

Unlabelled: Cancer patients are in an exposed situation that raises certain psychosocial needs in contact with health care. Previous studies have mainly investigated these needs by assessments on pre-defined categories.

Objective: The purpose of the present study is, from the patients' perspective, to identify breast cancer patients' psychosocial needs, and to synthesise them in a model reflecting the core of these needs.

[Abortion--a taboo right. Women's complex experiences include both relief and pain].

Women resort to abortion in all possible contexts and the motives for abortion reflect the need of women for planned parenthood. Women's experiences of abortion are complex; the abortion is experienced as a relief and regarded as a form of exercising responsibility. This does not exclude ethical reasoning or simultaneous painful feelings.