Sixteen articles are included. Eight themes emerged from the literature: care in the Emergency Department is about living not dying, staff perceive that death is a failure, staff feel underprepared to care for the dying patient and family in this environment, there is limited time for safe standards of care, staff stress and distress, staff use of distancing behaviours, the care of the dying role is devolved from medics to nurses at the end of life, and patients and staff perceive that the Emergency Department is not the preferred place of death CONCLUSION: There are areas of concern about end of life care in the Emergency Department. To improve practice and to ensure that a good death occurs, further research is needed. There is a need to understand more about the experience of caregivers when a relative or friend dies in the Emergency Department.
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