Background: People with rheumatic diseases estimate their health status low. The health status and health belief are influencing the choice of self-care behaviours. Self-care behaviours are common and could prevent loss of valued life activities and health. Little is known of how people with rheumatic diseases experience self-care.

Objectives: To describe people with rheumatic diseases experiences of health-promoting self-care.

Methods: The study had a phenomenological approach based on a reflective life-world perspective. Data were gathered by unstructured and open-ended interviews with 12 individuals with various diagnoses of rheumatic diseases.

Results: For people with rheumatic diseases, self-care was a way of life and implied being ready at all times to understand and respond to signals from the lived body. Self-care was experienced as an internal dialogue within the lived body but also as an external dialogue with the immediate environment. Self-care could also be described as a power struggle where the individuals strived and forced themselves to fight the diseases and its concrete consequences. The self-care also required that choices were made. Crucial for the choices were trust in oneself and belief in one's own ability to chosen health-promoting self-care. The individual prioritised self-care that was experienced as a beneficial and/or a reward for the lived body.

Conclusion: People with rheumatic diseases experienced self-care as a way of life and that it meant to be ready at all times to understand and respond to signals that the lived body sends out. Self-care required dialogue, power struggle and choice. This knowledge ads to a fuller understanding of factors that from a patient perspective are important for health when living with a chronic rheumatic disease.

Disclosure of Interest: None declared