Background: Patients who deliberate self harm often feel disappointed with the health care. The consequence of this may be that the patient avoid to seek help after self harming. Nurses' often experience these patients to be difficult and hard to deal with. Both patients' and nurses' thoughts about the situation may affect the situation in a negative way. A good relationship between the caregiver and patient is important. Therefore it is important for the nurses' to know about their attitudes about self harming patients.

Aim: To explore nurses' attitudes and experiences meeting patients who deliberate self harm.

Method: A literature review was made out of seven qualitative articles.

Results: Five themes were extracted. They described experiences and attitudes towards patientswho deliberate self harm. The themes were understanding and acceptance, the need of support, inadequacy, the negative view of the patient and frustration and powerlessness. The theme understanding and acceptance described how the nurses' understood their patients and why they self harmed. The theme called need of support highlighted the importance of support by colleagues and management. The third theme inadequacy reflects the nurses' feelings of inability to handle these patients. The theme that described the negative view of the patient includes many attitudes regarding self harm. Frustration and powerlessness is the theme that showed how nurses'reacted in a self harming situation.

Conclusion: The need of knowledge and education for the nurses' were essential. Also the supportfrom colleagues and management were important. To give good care to patients who self harm, nurses' need to know their attitudes and be able to put them aside. This study has shown the importance of debriefing and support in the workgroup. Otherwise the nurse may be run-down by all the feelings regarding these patients. These findings indicate a lot about what the nurses' needs. Not to be forgotten is that especially the patient wins a lot if the nurse can give good health care.