Background: Children can become anxious when undergoing emergency medical treatment. Therefore, emergency departments should be child friendly. This study explored emergency nurses' perspectives on children's needs during emergency care.
Method: This qualitative study employed purposive sampling to recruit 17 emergency nurses from 3 medical centers in northern and central Taiwan. Individual interviews were conducted between January and August 2021. Data were analyzed through qualitative content analysis.
Results: The participants had 2-23 years of experience in caring for children in emergency departments. We identified 208 unique meaning units in the interview data, 79 of which were related to child-friendly emergency care. These were classified into 42 codes across 6 categories and 27 subcategories. The six categories were timely comfort, emotional care, frontline safety, emergency response, human resources support, and treatment efficiency.
Conclusion: Emergency nurses have professional competencies, play a crucial role as care providers for children in the emergency department, and ensure the comfort and safety of children seeking treatment. The categories related to child-friendly emergency care identified in this study can serve as a basis for developing child-friendly care emergency guidelines.
Keywords: Child; Emergency department; Needs; Nurses; Qualitative research.
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