Aim: The aim of this study was to describe the nurse’s work at an emergency department trough a perspective of caring.

Method: A literature review has been made of twelve studies published between the years of 2002 – 2012. The focus of all the studies was on Swedish emergency departments.  

Results: The researchers found four themes that they choose to use as a way of describing the nurses work in the emergency room as detailed as possible. These themes were: ‘The emergency room’, ‘the nurse’s job assignments at an emergency department’, ‘the patient’s experiences’ and ‘lifeworld and communication’. This study shows that it is problematic for the nurses to give a caring nursing. The emergency department is more focused on medicine than caring, as there are certain parameters to follow as a nurse at an emergency department.  Lack of time and manpower has been a consistent factor in this study to explain the inability to give good caring at the emergency department.

Conclusion: High workload leads to short time with each patient. This leads to a lack of patient care in the emergency room. In the short meetings with patients, important information could get lost and this could lead to inferior nursing. This study shows that some nurses developed strategies to make a fast and correct assessment of the patient. Other nurses developed strategies to make the patients feel more comfortable. Examples were to make eye contact, touch the patient in a comforting way and take the time to really listen to the patient during the short time they had with each patient.