Aim:  To describe and develop understanding of  the patient’s first encounter with the involved persons at the scene of an accident and at the emergency department; with a special focus on describing the meaning of emergency care of patients in these caring contexts. 

Method: The thesis uses a reflective lifeworld research (RLR) approach founded on phenomenological philosophy. The purpose with this approach is to describe the essential meaning and the variations of a phenomenon. Interviews with a lifeworld perspective were used for data collection and analyzed according to the RLR approach for searching for the essence of the phenomenon.  The four essences in the studies (I-IV) establish a general structure for the phenomenon.

Findings:  Emergency care is characterized by an organisation, whose goal and resources are focused on life-saving, and that encounters a human being with needs of emergency care as well as existential support. The responsibility in emergency care means an intertwining of doing and being.  The one who is in charge takes responsibility for performing or “doing” medical actions, and by “being” close and present in the situation the patient can at the same time feel an existential support. The responsibility for the injured or ill body is handed over to a chain of persons with more and more specialized competence and resources. This hand-over entails a relief for all involved but fails in one link in the chain, namely to explicitly hand back  the responsibility to the patient.  When the patient’s condition allows the distance to be larger the responsibility pales and the existential support decreases. A gap between doing and being arises where the patient is left to regain control and independence. The intertwining of doing and being, which appears as soon as the one in charge is close and present to the patient, facilitates the hand-over to the patient who in a natural way is able to receive the responsibility with possibilities to be able to conclude the encounter.

Conclusions: A new understanding of emergency care appears which entails more than just life support measures.  Emergency care includes different ways of communication in order to hand over the responsibility and complete the care chain back to the patient in a safe way. The results highlight the importance of empowering patients with a confirming, communicative contact throughout the whole caring process in order for them to retain their identity. There are also implications for educating students and personnel in inter-professional communication and work. In order to assist the intertwining between doing and being there are needs for the development of supportive structures for inter-professional reflection, which in turn would improve the interaction between patients and professionals in their encounter.