Lay summary
Spiritual care is considered the responsibility of all healthcare staff, as suggested by the Ministry of Health; but internationally and nationally, spirituality has been shown to be a significant unmet need across many healthcare contexts. While all healthcare professionals can provide generalist spiritual care, the field is led by specialists – healthcare chaplains or spiritual care practitioners – who are ideally placed to lead policy development, staff education and spiritual care, and patient / whanau spiritual care. This proposal aims to bring together key actors to plan a co-designed national review of professional spiritual care (largely healthcare chaplains) in NZ healthcare. This funding will provide opportunity and resources to do the following research activities: 1.Examine best practice internationally (literature review); 2.Develop a co-design ropu - get the right people and organisations around the table (relationship development), and 3.Co-design a health delivery research project application (priority setting).