Hospice Volunteer: How to Make a Difference in Your Community
How to Make a Difference in your Community
To volunteer is to willingly give your time, efforts, and talents to others with no expectations. While a volunteer does not give his/her time for something in return, you will know that you made a difference. Beyond knowing that you are giving a part of yourself and your time to another human being or animals or activity, volunteering provides and shows your outward love toward others.
A hospice volunteer is a special type of individual, called to help those at the end of life. Hospice is the service provided to a patient with a terminal illness with a prognosis of 6 months or less to live. Hospice patients are moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, and sons and daughters. They are community members, friends, and neighbors. They are individuals with needs and desires, regardless of their medical condition.
What many people do not know is that hospice agencies rely on, and are accountable for, hospice volunteers for multiple needs within their patient base. What does is mean to be a hospice volunteer? It means becoming a hero in your own way. On your own time. With your own personality. Your own skills. And your own ability to relate.
Hospice volunteers are essential members of the hospice team. Each volunteer plays a vital role that enables the hospice to better meet the needs of patients, families, and communities. Volunteers have an enormous impact on the quality of life experienced by the patient, the hospice team of which they are a part of, and the families and friends of those terminally ill. To the patients and families, volunteers are seen as members of the community which brings in a feeling of comfort. They can help provide and return some sense of normality for the patients and families during hard times. Your very presence can be the most precious gift you can give.
There are two types of hospice volunteers: Patient Care Volunteers and Administrative Volunteers.
Patient Care Volunteers are part of a patient’s care team, providing direct and indirect patient care. Direct patient care includes reading to a patient, assisting with a hobby, running errands, providing caregiver relief and many other activities. Indirect patient care includes window painting at nursing homes, planting flowers, mowing a yard, and helping with other needs of patients and families. The simplest task to you can mean the world to someone else.
Administrative Volunteers do not work directly with patients and families, but instead support the hospice care team with other needs. This includes preparing packets and charts, answering phones, and putting together care baskets to community partners. The opportunities are endless.
Whether you are crocheting blankets for patients or filing charts, prefer to work internally behind the scenes or out in the field, you are giving the precious gift of time. You are giving heart and soul to patients, families, and the team, however you choose to become a hospice volunteer.
These callings of love are done because we want to, not because it is something that is required. Whether you feel called to offer companionship and a listening ear to a patient and their family, help with office work, or assist at an event, there’s a volunteer opportunity for everyone.
Make a difference in your community. Make a difference in yourself.
