Objective: to understand elderly people's experiences in emergencies through access to other levels of health care.
Methods: a phenomenological study in the light of Heidegger, conducted with 19 elderly patients admitted to an Emergency Care Unit of the city of Salvador, between April and October 2019.
Results: ontic primacy: Disposition of the experience of elderly people waiting for regulation; Constitutional anguish and fear in the willingness to be an elderly person waiting for regulation in an Emergency Care Unit; Inappropriate elderly being suppressed while waiting for regulation; Being an elderly person unveiled in the existential modality of being for death. Ontological primacy: Heal how to be the presence of elderly people waiting for regulation.
Final considerations: elderly people being anguished and afraid, feelings that allow the questioning of their own being, who want a healing and seeks ways that allows an active and proper participation in care.