Patient experience in the emergency department: inconsistencies in the ethic and duty of care

To understand how people who present on multiple occasions to the emergency department experience their health professionals moral comportment (ethic of care and duty of care); and to understand the consequences of this for `people who present on multiple occasions ongoing choices in care. People with chronic illness who had multiple presentations were interviewed about the role that emergency departments played within their lives and health-illness journey. Unprompted, all participants shared views about the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the care they received from the health professionals in the emergency departments they had attended. These responses raised the imperative for specific analysis of the data regarding the need for and experience of an ethic of care.