Abstract: Objective To systematically summarize the qualitative research on real experience of adult children as caregivers of dying patients, to better understand their needs, difficulties, experience and gains, and to provide reliable basis for the construction of support scheme based on adult children's experience. Methods Four Chinese relevant databases(Wanfang database, VIP, CNKI and CBM) and four English databases (PubMed, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science and EMbase) were searched for qualitative research on the experience of adult children caregivers of dying patient from the inception to February 2021. The quality of studies was evaluated according to JBI Critical Appraisal Tool for qualitative studies in Australia, and Nvivo 11 software was used to integrate the results through a collective integration method. Results A total of 55 findings were extracted from 14 qualified studies. The 55 findings were consequently integrated into 7 categories and finally 3 synthesized results were summarized as follows: children caregiver's attitude towards death; children's motivation, behavior, experience and changes when caring for dying patients; children's dilemma and needs when caring for dying patients. Conclusion Adult children have complicated experience in caring for the dying patients. Medical staff should pay attention to the experience and their special difficulties in time, provide death education and humanistic care for adult children caregivers, so as to promote experience sharing and care ability.

Key words: end of life, adult children, experience, qualitative research, Meta-synthesis