Table 3.

Illustration of the analytic process

Meaning unit	“It’s something with the term incurable cancer. It does something to the ones following up. When it says cancer, their shoulders rise immediately.”
	“There’s something about cancer and palliative phase. It has some expectations attached. That often makes your shoulders rise a little. When you’re talking to the patients, and you move over to topics like life and death and the patient’s anxiety and expectations and so on.”
Condensed meaning unit	The term incurable cancer makes the shoulders rise
Coding	Fear of cancer and death
Category	Cancer-specific competence
Sub-theme	Knowledge and competence
Theme	Lack of experience and personal distress of cancer inhibited professional care