What difference do chaplains make?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
What difference do chaplains make? Analysis of chaplain interventions in palliative day care in UK
IRAS ID
249677
Contact name
Austyn Snowden
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Edinburgh Napier University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 4 days
Research summary
Chaplains provide spiritual support to people in hospices. Patients and families describe their interventions as comforting and helpful, but it is difficult to generalise from these reports. The UK population is increasingly secular, other professions also profess to offer spiritual care, and funding is always tight. There is consequently an urgent need to go beyond anecdotal evidence and generate quantifiable evidence of the impact of chaplain interventions. This study is designed to provide such evidence, and is hosted by ten hospices across the UK. Each hospice has a day unit, a resource for people diagnosed with terminal illness in need of support. Patients attend for 8 weeks, and throughout their time there patients may choose to see a chaplain or they may not. Chaplains are clearly available for all, but whether to engage or not is entirely down to the individual. This naturalistic study includes everybody that chooses to participate. The main outcome measure is the score on The Scottish Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM), a five-item self-report scale designed to measure the outcome of chaplain interventions. All participants complete this measure at the beginning and the end of their stay at the day hospital. Chaplains record how many times they have seen the patient, and how deep the conversation was. Analysis consists of examining the differences in scores between those patients who have seen a chaplain, and those that have not.
Primary aim is to evaluate the impact of chaplains on patient reported outcomes in palliative day care.
Primary hypotheses:
1. There will be a significant correlation between the number of times a chaplain sees a patient and the change in PROM scores from baseline to post intervention.
2. There will be a significant correlation between the chaplain reported depth of the encounters and the change in PROM scores from baseline to post intervention.REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/SC/0571
Date of REC Opinion
25 Oct 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion