Introduction Emergencies care in occupational health care for organisations and groups and their individual departments and support for personal injuries and illnesses including life crises. However, the details of emergencies care in occupational health care are unclear. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the competencies required of occupational health nurses (OHNs) in emergency care.

This study forms a part of efforts to construct a continuing education system for OHNs to improve their competencies in emergency care.

Methods A semi-guided interview was conducted with 10 OHNs. Referencing the data obtained from the research on continuing education for OHNs and the data obtained from the research on core curricula of nursing universities in Japan, these interview results were categorised base on their similarities and examined for their competencies in emergency care.

Results All participants in this study were women with 7–28 years of experience in occupational health nursing. The number of total employees at the workplace of each participant was assessed and it was established that for 2 of the participants there were <300 employees for each of their companies, for 1 of the participants there was 300–500 employees, for 3 other participants there were 500–1000 employees, for another 3 participants there were 1,000–3000 employees, and ≥10 000 for another one 1 of the participants. Items extracted from the results of the interviews included emergency treatment skills, motivation, preventive activities as well as team training and general employees education.

Conclusion The results suggested that to provide emergency care, OHNs must be able to identify life crises when they are occurring and provide emergency treatment, engage in preventive activities to prevent emergencies from occurring or aggravating, and exhibit ethical behaviour and professionalism in emergencies. Based on these details, we intend to further investigate the content of education and develop a continuing education program for OHNs.