Background: Palliative care focuses on maintaining the best quality of life for the affected individual and her/his relatives. Previous studies show that family members who are the primary caregiver feel overwhelmed and left out of information and decision making. The nurse plays a crucial role in caring for the patient and the family.

Aim: The aim of this review was to report relatives' experiences of nurses' behaviour in palliative care.

Methods: This is a literature review with a qualitative approach to describe how relative se xperience the palliative care. Qualitative studies can increase understanding of experiences, which is the reason for this approach.

Results: Ten qualitative studies were included in the final analysis. The result show poorly provided communication and information was the most common problem within palliative care, followed by emotional stress, which constituted the two main themes based on four subthemes.

Conclusion: The study shows that the family members of the patients receiving palliative care had both positive and negative experiences. The nurse plays a vital role in supporting the family as well as the patient by seeing the patient and her/his family as a unit. Providing information, being present, confirming their individual feelings and comforting them helped the family members to cope with the situation.