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Empowerment is a concept of growing importance in cancer care, but little is known about cancer patients’ experiences of empowerment during follow-up. To explore this area, a qualitative systematic literature review was conducted in PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. A total of 2,292 papers were identified and 38 articles selected and included in the review. The thematic synthesis of the papers resulted in seven analytical themes being identified: empowerment as an ongoing process, knowledge is power, having an active role, communication and interaction between patients and health care professionals, support from being in a group, religion and spirituality, and gender. Very few articles explicitly explored the empowerment of cancer patients during follow-up, and the review identified a lack of attention to patients’ own understandings of empowerment, a lack of specific focus on empowerment during follow-up, and insufficient attention to collective empowerment, as well as ethnic, social, and gender differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the findings of the qualitative phase of a New Zealand longitudinal study on vulnerable young people’s transitions to adulthood. The young people were aged between 12 and 17 years at the time of the first interview. The paper focuses on one key finding, how youth enact agency through their relationships with significant others: families, social workers, teachers and care workers. These youth had experienced sustained exposure to harm including abuse, violence, addictions, disengagement from school and mental health issues. The qualitative interviews focused on young people’s experiences with services (child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and education support services) their key transitions, and the strategies they used to locate support and resources. The thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that a search for agency was a central motif in young people’s experiences. This was reflected in three thematic clusters: making sense of the world, having a voice and acting on the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]