How to Become a Hospice Volunteer

“The last good thing someone may feel is the touch of a volunteer.”

A Forbes article summarizes the benefits of volunteering, including feeling like you have more time, gaining valuable life and work experience, and increased happiness through empathy, social bonds, and love. Hospice volunteers are especially prone to grow and stretch due to the incredibly intimate nature of their work.

What do hospice volunteers do?

How you’re utilized in a volunteer role depends greatly on your own interests. Volunteers are needed to provide a myriad of services to both patients and their families during end of life. As a hospice volunteer, you might prepare meals for patients and their families, help with household chores, provide non-medical supervision so that the family care giver can get away for a few hours, or provide companionship to patients and families.

Patients often ask hospice volunteers to play music, read aloud to them, share scripture, pray with them, or whatever else they like to do!

How do I become a hospice volunteer?

If you’re interested in becoming a hospice volunteer, you can contact our team at 480-748-4300 to discuss opportunities that might be a fit for your interest and skills. Before you can begin working as a hospice volunteer, you’ll need to complete some prescreening steps (like a background screen, for example) and hospice volunteer training provided by Santé.

Specialized hospice volunteer training will give you the skills and confidence you need to excel in a volunteer role. Santé offers volunteer training that includes:

• your boundaries as a volunteer; when to help and when to get help
• how to deal with the emotional reaction to caring for someone with a terminal illness
• the philosophy of care at Santé
• what patients need physically, emotionally, and spiritually during their end of life journey
• how to support patients, and their friends and family members, through grief and loss
• which services are offered by hospice and how to engage those services
• how to communicate with patients and their families and friends
• the importance of confidentiality

Our hospice team provides training initially and on-going on how to do this valuable service and provides grief and support services to the volunteers on an ongoing basis. Volunteers must pass a background check, drug screen, have TB clearance, have a class II fingerprint card, and participate in orientation activities but hospice will assist you to complete the process.

Call us today if you would like to enrich your life and that of others by becoming a hospice volunteer!