Background: Palliative care is a holistic form of care to be offered to people with progressive, incurable and life-threatening diseases and aims to alleviate suffering and promote quality of life. A holistic care includes psychological, physical, social and spiritual needs and requires a multidisciplinary competence to relieve symptoms and promote quality of life. A basic tenet of palliative care is inter-professional teamwork and the organization of care into team structures has been a long-standing tradition.

Aim: The aim of the study was to describe the team´s experience of teamwork in palliative care.

Method: This literature-based study is based on a method to contribute to evidence-based care with foundation in analysis of qualitative research. Two databases were used, Cinahl and Pubmed, to search for scientific articles. Analysis of eight scientific articles were performed by using a five-step model describe by Friberg.

Results: Through the analysis three themes emerged; the climate within the palliative care team, responsibility, competence and role of the palliative team and the importance of the organization for teamwork in palliative care. The first theme describes the importance of good communication and respect for each other within the team. The second theme clarifies that joint responsibility and clear goal facilitates teamwork together with an awareness of the skills of the other professionals. The third theme revealed information about the importance of leadership on the quality of teamwork and the lack of interprofessional training.

Conclusion: The result give confirmation of already known knowledge that the ability to communicate, knowledge of the role and function of team-members and training in teamwork are important parts in engaging cooperation. That leads to conducting good quality teamwork but further research and education is needed in how this understanding can be put into practice.