Table 9 Themes and quotes from the two focus groups with the nurses

Theme I:

“Objectivity and subjectivity in the assessment of fatigue”

1. “It’s a kind of tiredness that leaves patients with very little willingness to face the day, with little motivation” (Focus Group 1, Nurse 1)

2. “Sometimes, during handover you receive information about how the nurse who was there before you perceived the patient, but then you personally think that the patient is no longer like that. Maybe because the patient is feeling better now or we may have different ways of seeing things” (Focus Group 2, Nurse 4)

“Ours is a perception” (Focus Group 1, Nurse 3)

Theme II:

“Nursing contribution in the multidisciplinary management of fatigue”

3. “We have to reflect on this because I think that in addition to encouraging patients to do things, we are mostly their spokespersons” (Focus Group 2, Nurse 5)

4. “Sometimes relatives insist a lot and we let them do things we are not supposed to let them do” (Focus Group 2, Nurse 3)

“I saw the case of a patient where his wife was present and helped out” (Focus Group 1, Nurse 4)

5. “When we listen to a patient that talks about this symptom it’s a problem for us, sometimes we really don’t know what to do” (Focus Group 2, Nurse 6)

6. “We do the interventions but in my view, they are just our own initiative, and we don’t always feel like talking about them, or writing a report about them or objectifying them” (Focus Group 2, Nurse 1)

“the thing it that we don’t agree on a care plan with our colleagues, we just say: there’s this problem, what shall we do? Each of us does a little of what has already been done before or seen before. There is no thinking about which interventions need to be implemented in the future.” (Focus Group 1, Nurse 8)

Theme III:

“Difficulty evaluating outcomes”

7.“Frankly, I’m not sure of the actual benefit I am providing, it may well be an inducted symptom that it could be due to the patient’s treatment”. (Focus Group 1, Nurse 5)

“We experience a bit of frustration, in the sense that we do what we can, but what he actually does is that he just stays in bed”. (Focus Group 2, Nurse 7)