Chaplains are employed by ambulance services in many states across Australia as one element in a suite of initiatives to support the health and wellness of paramedics. The aim of this paper is to present key findings from a study that explored paramedic perspectives on the role and value of chaplains in the ambulance service. Seventeen paramedics participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using framework analysis. Two themes were identified: scope of the chaplain’s role and organisational factors influencing the chaplain’s role. Paramedics highly valued what they believed to be proactive and reactive support provided by ambulance chaplains, regardless of paramedics’ personal spiritual or religious beliefs.

Background: Empathy and compassion are integral to person‐centred care. Contemporary literature also provides evidence of the impact of empathic and compassionate care on patient outcomes, including enhanced satisfaction with care and improved patient safety. Notably, a previous scoping review identified only a limited number of studies exploring patients' experiences of empathic and compassionate care, underscoring the need for further research on patients' and their significant others' perspectives and experiences of empathic and compassionate healthcare encounters.Objective: The aim of this paper is to explore patients' and their significant others' perceptions of empathic and compassionate healthcare encounters.Methods: This qualitative descriptive international survey recruited people who were willing to report on a personal experience with a healthcare professional that demonstrated positive or negative examples of empathic and/or compassionate care. Data were analysed using Framework Analysis.Results: A total of 84 participants from the Pacific region, the United States of America, and Europe reported encounters with nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, and multidisciplinary teams. Analysis revealed four overarching themes: (1) Verbal and non‐verbal communication; (2) Clinician attitudes and attributes; (3) The power of small, thoughtful gestures; and (4) Enduring impact of empathic care.Conclusions: To promote empathic and compassionate care, there needs to be a holistic focus on practitioner communication across the bio‐psycho‐social‐spiritual domains. When these elements are included in interactions with patients and their significant others, healthcare providers can have a powerful and long‐lasting impact on people's experiences and health outcomes.

Background Chaplains in first responder and military services support staff prior to, during and after critical incidents. Some studies have explored the role of chaplains in these settings predominantly in the military and from chaplains’ perspectives. However, few studies have explored the perspective of staff. This scoping review aims to map the literature on staff perceptions of the role and value of chaplains in first responder and military settings. Method A scoping review using the Arksey & O’Malley (2003) and Joanna Briggs Institute Scoping Review Methodology was conducted. English language peer-reviewed and grey literature in CINAHL, PubMed, PsychINFO, ProQuest and Google Scholar from 2004-2019 was reviewed for inclusion. Records were included if they provided staff perspectives on the role and value of chaplains in first responder and military settings. The initial search identified 491 records after removal of duplicates. All titles and abstracts were then screened for relevance to the research question and 84 were selected for full-text review. Seven records were included in final review; five dissertations and two peer-reviewed articles. Five of these were from the military and two from the police. Data were extracted and thematically analysed to identify staff perceptions of the role, skills and attributes, and value of chaplains in first responder and military settings. Results Staff understood the role of chaplain to include the provision of spiritual and pastoral care and guidance and, in the case of police, providing scene support. Staff from all of the services identified requisite skills and attributes for chaplains such as being available, approachable and engaged; counselling; maintaining confidentiality and trust; being organisationally aware; and possessing distinct personality traits and knowledge of specialty content areas. The value chaplains brought to their services emerged from chaplains being trusted as a result of being proactively available for staff, families and bystanders for formal and informal conversation; organisational belonging and awareness resulting in enhanced staff satisfaction and retention; and promoting staff physical, mental, social and spiritual wellbeing. Conclusions Although military and police staff identified spiritual, psychological and social benefits to chaplains maintaining an active and visible role in their services, the small number of papers identified make generalisation of these findings to other first responder services problematic. Further research is therefore required to understand the impact of the chaplain’s role as part of the care team in first responder services.

Chaplains are embedded in several ambulance services across Australia, however as Australia’s religiosity is currently in decline and questions are being asked about retaining chaplains, little is actually known about their role and value within Ambulance services. The aim of this paper is to present the key findings from interviews with chaplains about their role and value of being ambulance chaplains. These findings are then compared with those of paramedics derived from an earlier phase of this study. Thirteen chaplains participated in semi-structured interviews, and data were analysed using framework analysis. The results indicated that ambulance chaplains provided paramedic-centred emotional and spiritual care through proactively and reactively supporting paramedics in their work. Chaplains saw value in their relational approach which facilitated trust and access, did not seek to ‘fix’ or diagnose but instead offered physical and emotional presence, and promoted supportive conversations. Chaplains and paramedics valued operationally trained and equipped ambulance chaplains who provided a relational, around the clock, ‘frontline’ staff support presence in paramedic workplaces, regardless of the paramedic’s personal religious/spiritual beliefs.