Background: Telephone counseling is constantly increasing in health care. It involves a dialogue and assessment process with the aim of examining both the subjective and objective in patients' health problems. Telephone counseling is made difficult when there is no visual contact. Patient safety can be reduced on the basis of the long call queue, which can lead to incorrect assessment due to a high work rate.

Aim: To describe nurses' experiences of working with telephone counseling in somatic care.

Method: A literature-based study in which ten scientific articles have been analyzed. Systematic searches for scientific articles in nursing were made in the databases CINAHL and PubMed. Articles about nurses experiences of working with telephone counseling in somatic care with a qualitative method were included.

Results: The result obtained showed different experiences for the nurses, which included four main themes: difficulties in making a professional assessment, challenges in conversations with the care seeker, stress and fatigue, and deficiencies in the working environment. The main themes are supported by a total of ten subcategories.

Conclusion: The nurses experienced telephone counseling difficult and challenging. Due to the lack of visual contact, it becomes more difficult to create a good quality of care for the patient. The nurses experienced various obstacles in telephone counseling, which proved to be difficult for the nurses to work patient-safety. Therefore, it is important that there is a good communication between the nurse and the patient to facilitate the work and meet the patient's needs.