Introduction: Patients in palliative care need holistic management of their symptoms and problems. The provision of palliative care at home is professionally and ethically demanding and requires systematic advance care planning. Lay caregivers play a major role in fulfilling the wish to die at home and are an important link in the care of palliative care patients in the home environment, providing care and support to patients in the final phase of life in the home environment. Purpose: Palliative care in the home environment with a lay caregiver is an unexplored area in Slovenia, therefore the aim of the literature review in this thesis is to investigate the role of the lay caregiver in palliative care in the home environment and the role of the nurse in the process of identifying the needs of the patient and the lay caregiver. Methods: The thesis reviews the foreign scientific literature. The literature was searched through: CINAHL Ultimate, ScienceDirect and PubMed. 11 articles published between 2014 and 2024 were included in the analysis. Results: We identified four main themes: the experiences of lay carers, the needs of lay carers, lay carers' coping with POs, and collaboration with health professionals. Discussion and conclusion: We found that palliative care in the home environment is challenging for lay carers, who face a variety of challenges. Nurses are an important link in providing quality palliative care in the home environment by assisting with early care planning, providing practical training for the lay carer and identifying emotional support needs. Research in this area, particularly in Slovenia, is scarce and we see a need for further research and the development of guidelines for holistic management of patients and lay caregivers in palliative care. In the future, it would be useful to conduct research in the field of lay carers and palliative care in Slovenia as well, in order to gain a better insight into the current state of palliative care, which may allow for planning improvements.
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