Abstract: Objective To conduct a systematic review on self-care experience of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Methods We collected literatures on self-care experience of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy in The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, CINAHL, CBM, CNKI, VIP and Wanfang, from the inception to September 2019. Quality evaluation criteria for quality research in Australian JBI evidence-based health care centers was used to evaluate the qualities of studies. The results were integrated by using pooled integration method in Meta integration. Results Totally 62 findings, which classified into 7 categories were extracted from 16 qualified studies, and finally 3 integrated synthesized results were obtained as followed. 1. self-care maintenance: information and social support are helpful for patients to strengthen self-care beliefs to better maintain self-care behaviors and improve their treatment compliance; 2. symptom identification: patients should be able to accurately perceive different symptoms of chemotherapy, the related psychological burden, and its huge impact on life; 3: self-care experience: after self-adjustment, patients gradually adapted to various chemotherapy-related side effects, found the rules of self-care and kept growing. Conclusion Nurses should pay more attention to the impact of chemotherapy on cancer patients. In the process of self-care, sufficient support and guidance should be given to help patients scientifically understand chemotherapy and adapt to chemotherapy, so as to improve clinical outcome and improve the quality of life.

Key words: cancer, chemotherapy, self-care, qualitative research, systematic review, Meta-integration