The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of the lived experience of hope in patients with cancer in palliative home care. Narrative interviews with 11 patients were interpreted using a phenomenological-hermeneutic method, inspired by Ricoeur. The findings revealed a tension between hoping for something, that is a hope of getting cured, and living in hope, that is reconciliation and comfort with life and death. This tension is highlighted, according to the views of the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, as a state of 'recollection'. The interviewees told of the hope of living as normally as possible and of the experience of confirmative relationships as dimensions of their lived experience of hope. These findings show that hope is a dynamic experience, important to both a meaningful life and a dignified death, for those patients suffering from incurable cancer.

This study describes the theoretical assumptions and the application for health-promoting conversations, as a communication tool for nurses when talking to patients and their families. The conversations can be used on a promotional, preventive and healing level when working with family-focused nursing. They are based on a multiverse, salutogenetic, relational and reflecting approach, and acknowledge each person's experience as equally valid, and focus on families' resources, and the relationship between the family and its environment. By posing reflective questions, reflection is made possible for both the family and the nurses. Family members are invited to tell their story, and they can listen to and learn from each other. Nurses are challenged to build a co-creating partnership with families in order to acknowledge them as experts on how to lead their lives and to use their own expert knowledge in order to facilitate new meanings to surface. In this way, family health can be enhanced.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of registered nurses (RNs) about the importance of involving families in nursing care. A sample of 634 randomly selected Swedish RNs completed the instrument, Families' Importance in Nursing Care-Nurses' Attitudes (FINC-NA), and reported holding supportive attitudes about families. High scores were found for the subscales: family as a resource in nursing care, family as a conversational partner, family as a burden, and family as its own resource. Variables that predicted a less supportive attitude about involving families in nursing care included being a newly graduated nurse, having no general approach to the care of families at the place of work, and being a male nurse.