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Operations & systems
What drives lay community first responders in Denmark
“You could be in the target group yourself”: Lived experiences of community first responders without a professional healthcare background in Denmark - an interpretive phenomenological study
BMC Emergency Medicine · 2026-10-26 · Added 28 October 2026
An interpretive phenomenological study of ten Danish lay community first responders — part of a 60,000-volunteer national system, about 70% without healthcare backgrounds — identified four themes: a sense of duty, acting under uncertainty as a civilian-turned-responder, navigating relational roles with crews, and carrying personal identity into crisis.
- Study type
- Qualitative
- Design
- Qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis, semi-structured interviews
- Participants
- 10 community first responders without a professional healthcare background
- Main finding
- Four themes: a sense of duty, acting under uncertainty as a civilian-turned-responder, navigating relational roles with professionals and peers, and carrying the self into crisis; volunteers driven by moral duty, meaningfulness and community
- Caveat
- Ten volunteers recruited via social media in a single national system; IPA is about lived experience, not generalisable effect estimates
- Bottom line
- Context only
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). Community first responder schemes exist in parts of Australia and New Zealand but are nothing like Denmark's national 60,000-strong system, so this informs how volunteer integration with crews could work rather than describing current practice.
Learning goal
Understand the lived experience of volunteer community first responders so I can better support them on scene.
More
- Topic: Operations & systems
- Daily scan: 28 October 2026
- Podcast: Paramedic Papers Daily, 28 October 2026
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