Abstract

Aims: Learning in crisis is an approach to help employees deal with critical situations. The nature of critical care departments is similar to the nature of critical situations. The present study was an attempt to identify the most important learning strategies in staff in emergency department of a military hospital so that the facilitative learning strategies could be identified and the main obstacles in this regard would be determined. Methods: The present study was a qualitative phenomenological piece of research in which semi-structured interview was used to collect data. Purposeful sampling with maximum variation was used for data collection with 20 emergency department staff taking part in the interviews. The sampling continued until the point of theoretical saturation. Analytical framework was used for data analysis. The interviews were indexed by Atlas-Ti software, and the expected themes and sub-themes were identified. Results: In this study, 8 themes and 28 sub-themes were extracted as factors affecting learning strategies in crisis. The main themes were the importance of learning at work, barriers of learning in crisis, opportunity of learning in crisis; factors affecting learning in crisis; types of learning strategies in crisis; role of management in learning in crisis; role of environment in learning in crisis, and psychological characteristics of employees. Conclusion: The good management of the staff, paying attention to their financial concerns, making them interested in the job they do, and devising a specific structure for instruction are all steps to take to help facilitate learning in crisis.