Nurses are central to health care as the largest professional workforce and the providers of constant, ongoing care. Difficulties retaining enough qualified and motivated nurses presents an ongoing problem that threatens the quality of healthcare delivery. Demands of nursing practice, often resulting in stress and burnout, is a major barrier to retaining nurses. Self-care approaches and techniques have proven effective in reducing stress and burnout, increasing job satisfaction and the likelihood of nurses remaining in the profession. Despite knowing the benefits, nurses frequently do not engage in self-care resulting in negative consequences both personally and professionally. To advance our knowledge in this important area, a review of the literature was conducted to explore nurses' experience of self-care and how they made sense of their experiences. The literature was analysed critically and synthesised through a phenomenological lens. The identified themes were structured according to phenomenological concerns: selfhood, mood and embodiment, sociality and relatedness, temporality, spatiality, and nursing culture. Understanding self-care from a phenomenological perspective is important to forming a deeper comprehension of nurses' relationship with self-care, including acceptance and resistance. This new knowledge can be used to develop strategies to encourage self-care. The implications for recruitment and retention within nursing, and ultimately to the quality of healthcare, are significant.