Nurse's experiences of the caring encounter as single responder in prehospital emergency care.

Background: In the Swedish emergency medical services, single responder and assessment units have been implemented 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 medical services.

Method: The study design was descriptive with a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews with eight single 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 the ambulance care "meeting unique human care needs with conscious caution", three categories emerged: Increased risk-awareness, Lack of resource support creates vulnerability and Professional experiences and personal qualities contribute to patient safety.

Conclusion: The single responders was aware of their vulnerability and a consistent theme was "caution". Risk assessments had evolved and were constantly present to maintain their own and the patient's safety. In critical patients, the experience of frustration and insufficiency dominated but at the same time there was a sense of meaningfulness. The main experience among all single responders was the feeling of getting close to the patient and responding to them in their own way.