Objective  To analyze the psychological experience characteristics of nursing staff with different roles in response to sudden public health emergencies so as to formulate targeted intervention strategies against the negative psychology of nursing staff.

  Methods  Based on the principle of information saturation, purposive sampling was used to select nursing staff with different roles, and semi-structured interviews were conducted from July to August 2022. The interview data were sorted and analyzed by QSR Nvivo 11.0 software.

  Results  A total of 18 nursing staff members were included in this interview, including 9 managers and 9 non-managers. Four tree nodes were determined based on the interview materials: positive orientation of work feelings, negative experience in the support process, influencing factors of negative experience, and psychological adjustment measures. The high-frequency words were "problem", "work", "influence", "psychology", "pressure", "communication", etc. The most important sub-node in the tree node of "influencing factors of negative experience", "psychological adjustment measures", "positive orientation of work feelings" and "negative experience in the support process" was "management pressure", "self-release path", "sense of value" and "worry", respectively. The proportion of negative matrix coding words for nursing management personnel was much greater than that for non-management personnel, while the proportion of positive matrix coding words was much smaller than that for non-management personnel.

  Conclusions  There were different degrees of negative psychological tendencies among front-line emergency nurses in sudden public health emergencies, among which management personnel were more prominent. Corresponding psychological adjustment intervention strategies should be formulated for nursing managers in emergency work.