The negative psychological impacts of working with traumatised people are well documented and include vicarious traumatisation (VT): the cumulative effect of identifying with clients' trauma stories that negatively impacts on service providers' memory, emotions, thoughts, and worldviews. More recently, the concept of vicarious resilience (VR) has been also identified: the strength, growth, and empowerment experienced by trauma workers as a consequence of their work. VR includes service providers' awareness and appreciation of their clients' capacity to grow, maintaining hope for change, as well as learning from and reassessing personal problems in the light of clients' stories of perseverance, strength, and growth. This study aimed at exploring the experiences of mental health, physical healthcare, and settlement workers caring for refugees and asylum seekers in South Australia. Using a qualitative method (data-based thematic analysis) to collect and analyse 26 semi-structured face-to-face interviews, we identified four prominent and recurring themes emanating from the data: VT, VR, work satisfaction, and cultural flexibility. These findings—among the first to describe both VT and VR in Australians working with refugee people—have important implications for policy, service quality, service providers' wellbeing, and refugee clients' lives. © 2015, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.

qualitative research Thematic analysis Asylum seeker Cultural competence service provider vicarious traumatisation vicarious resilience mental healthcare Refugee

Health Personnel doctor patient relation refugee Australia health care policy Ethnopsychology mental health care personnel cultural psychology health care personnel human Refugees coping behavior Adaptation, Psychological Job Satisfaction hope qualitative research health personnel attitude Cross-Sectional Studies interview asylum seeker cross-sectional study Humans psychology Interviews as Topic male semi structured interview female adaptive behavior commitment cultural factor occupation and occupation related phenomena resettlement worker cultural awareness Resilience, Psychological vicarious traumatization Article vicarious resilience South Australia thematic analysis health care quality work experience compassion fatigue