the meaning of emergency care in the iranian nursing profession

Background: an emergency department (ed) has multiple patients with a wide variety of conditions that receive care simultaneously. objectives: this study aimed at exploring the meaning of emergency care at a hospital emergency department. methods: a qualitative research design with content analysis method and purposeful sampling was used to identify the meaning of care. in-depth interviews were conducted with 17 iranian emergency department nurses from 2 military hospital emergency departments in tehran, during year 2015. results: three main categories emerged from the data. these categories included (1) accuracy, (2) speed, and (3) comprehensive action and caring attention. these 3 main categories represented the contextual meaning of emergency nursing care. conclusions: it was determined that the meaning of care in the studied context was different from other contexts, thus nurse managers must pay more attention to this diversity.