To Örebro University

Background: In the Swedish emergency medical services, single responder and assessment units have beenimplemented to meet the increasing need for ambulance assessment and care.

Aim: To describe registered nurseś experiences of care encounters as single responders in the emergency medicalservices.

Method: The study design was descriptive with a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews with eightsingle responders were used together with inductive content analysis.

Results: From the theme which showed the experiences of being a single responder in the caring encounter in theambulance care “meeting unique human care needs with conscious caution”, three categories emerged: Increasedrisk-awareness, Lack of resource support creates vulnerability and Professional experiences and personal qual-ities contribute to patient safety.

Conclusion: The single responders was aware of their vulnerability and a consistent theme was “caution”. Riskassessments had evolved and were constantly present to maintain their own and the patient’s safety. In criticalpatients, the experience of frustration and insufficiency dominated but at the same time there was a sense ofmeaningfulness. The main experience among all single responders was the feeling of getting close to the patientand responding to them in their own way.