Background: When there is no more cure for patients who are terminally ill, the treatment aims to relieve the patients’ pain and to increase quality of life. Nurses have a crucial role in meeting the patients’ needs and wishes at the end of life as well as in supporting the relatives in their grief. In the care of patients at the end of life, death is an inevitable event which can evoke various challenging and feelings in nurses.

Aim: The purpose of the study was to shed light on nurses' experiences of caring for patients at the end of life.

Method: A literature study with a qualitative method was carried out. Ten qualitative articles from the Cinahl and PubMed databases were selected for the study's results. The analysis in this study is based on Friberg's five-step model.

Results: In this study, two main themes and seven sub themes were identified. The two main themes are the challenges in end-of-life care and impressions and insights in care. The seven subthemes are: emotional encounters, existential encounters, lack of time, flaws in the environment, lack of knowledge and competence, the sense of meaning and the importance of support and guidance.

Conclusion: The results of this study showed that nurses experience both positive and negative emotions in working with end-of-life care. Nurses experience both physical and psychological distress when providing palliative care to patients at the end of life. Lack of knowledge, time,and an adapted environment in connection with end-of-life care, leads to a challenging and demanding occupation. The nurses also experience difficulties in connection with having emotional and existential encounters with the patient at the end of life. On the other hand, the nurses experience meaningfulness from participating in the patient's daily life during the last moments of life. These feelings affect the nurses' experiences positively.