Nurses who work in high-risk areas, such as emergency wards, are susceptible to traumatic stress. The present study is an exploratory one, which attempts to describe and interpret some event characteristics of traumatic incidents identified by nurses. Nine nurses from the Accident and Emergency wards of two New Zealand hospitals were interviewed using the repertory grid technique. Qualitative analysis was used to compare event characteristics across participants and four underlying themes were identified: personal issues, contextual issues, control issues, or organisational issues. Comparison of these results with previous work with high stress occupations suggests that although event characteristics from all groups can be broadly grouped under four themes, there are some distinct differences in the traumatic impact of some event characteristics for nurses. The results have implications in the development of measures of traumatic stress for nurses and have immediate implications for organisational practice.