Volunteer Training

Volunteer training is mandatory for all Hospice Client volunteers and strongly encouraged for other Hospice Volunteers.

Hospice volunteers are considered an essential component of the Formal Hospice Palliative Caregiving Team, along with physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, spiritual & religious care professionals, etc (Informal caregivers are friends and family members who also provide care and support to people living with a palliative illness.)

Volunteers are the only unpaid members of the Formal Caregiving Team. However, like their paid colleagues they are accountable to a healthcare organization for standards of conduct, knowledge and skill in the delivery of their care. Hospice Palliative Care Volunteer Training Program is designed to deliver on the CHPCA Norms of Practice, volunteer competencies and best practices for volunteer education to ensure quality care.

Volunteers in hospice palliative care constitute a discipline, analogous to the disciplines of counseling, medicine, nursing, spiritual care and other clinical components in our field. A disciple is one who follows a teaching and, in turn, teaches others. Thus, to recognize hospice palliative care volunteers as a discipline reminds us that our practice is grounded in deep values and principles:

• Working from commitment
  Volunteers are deeply committed to their work. We need to identify and explore the nature of that commitment with them.

• Volunteers are essential members of the interdisciplinary team
  Volunteers work in partnership, and offer support to each other and the team.

• Accountability and quality
  As part of the interdisciplinary team, hospice palliative care volunteers are formal caregivers, accountable to their program’s values, standards, principles and norms.

• Self-reflection, self-exploration and deepening self-awareness
  The person who chooses to enter the world of a dying person and offer his or her presence needs to be self-aware.

• Openness to ongoing learning
  Volunteers receive much from patients and family members with whom they work. This deep learning needs to be enhanced through the program’s efforts to help the volunteer move from novice to expert in practice over time.

• Respect
  The volunteer affirms the personhood and inherent dignity of each person, through his or her willingness to be with them.

• Understand the importance of sharing
  Sharing moments with a fellow being, whether patient, family or team member requires the ability both to give and to receive.

• Whose needs am I addressing?
  Distinguishing, in the moment, between patient, family, team and personal needs and being able to prioritize appropriately.

• Uniqueness of each situation
  Assessment and awareness of the special qualities of each person, in each situation.

• Being vs. doing
  The central challenge for the volunteer is how to be actively present for the person he or she is accompanying. This presence and openness to the person in the moment conveys a unique message of acceptance.
  
• Adjusting to change
  Volunteers are present as patients and family members experience the changes of advancing illness. They are affected, too, by organizational and community changes that impact on their work.

• Take the time you need
  So much of what we do in working with patients, family members and team requires an open-ended time frame. Attentiveness, accompanying, being actively present, simply cannot be rushed.

• The sense of urgency
  When patient, family or team discomfort is present, volunteers recognize the urgency to restore comfort and prioritize their work to achieve this end.

• Acceptance of difficult feelings
  Volunteers recognize that they will at times experience a sense of failure or helplessness and have the need for support.

• Death happens
  Awareness that a person’s death really is the outcome ¾ often unexpected, often not according to plan.

• Necessity to mourn
  Feelings of grief and loss are part of our relationships with patients and families.

• Death in Canadian society
• History, philosophy and principles of hospice palliative care
• Introduction to Hospice Greater Saint John
• Role of interdisciplinary team and working together to provide quality, comprehensive care
• Understanding the dying persons needs and experience

• Overview of pain and symptoms in terminal care
• Understanding the total pain experience
• Effective pain and symptom management
• Role of caregiver in pain and symptom management
• Use of complimentary therapies

• The final days and hours of a dying person’s life.
• Signs of approaching death
• Appropriate actions and comfort measures
• Supporting the family

• Principles of effective communication
• Effective communication with dying persons.
• Guidelines for being there and active listening
• Communicating with families

• Anticipatory grief
• The grief and bereavement process
• Expressions of grief and coping with loss
• Children, teens and grief
• Personal awareness of loss
• Supporting families to cope

• Understanding spirituality and religion
• Understanding the spiritual needs of a dying person
• Providing spiritual support in end-of-life care
• Hope and the human spirit

• General knowledge of different religions and faiths
• Knowledge of cultural attitudes towards death and dying
• Understanding and appreciation of the impact of cultural differences on care
• Comfort level with the volunteer’s role in improving relationships across cultures and supporting cultural beliefs related to dying and grieving.

• Understanding and coping with stress
• Warning signs of burnout
• Caring for the self

• Understanding people’s right to privacy
• Knowledge of confidentiality
• Understanding ethical issues in hospice palliative care

• Understanding health and safety issues
• Knowledge of standard precautions
• Understanding of MRSA
• Good hand washing techniques

• Understanding the roles, responsibilities and rights of volunteers
• Knowledge of Hospice Greater Saint John policies and responsibilities
• Putting it into practice tips and best practices
• Where from here and next steps

• Learn more about yourself, your feelings and beliefs about death, dying and grief
• Spend time remembering your reactions to loss, both at the time it occurred and in the adjustment period thereafter
• Understand what was helpful and what was not and prepare to be a Hospice volunteer

• Knowledge of how children and teens view death and grief
• Understand how children and teens cope and what information and support they need
• Guidelines for helping children and teens cope with the palliative and grief support process
• Understand how to support parents to respond appropriately to children and teens in  healthy/helpful  ways

• Training takes place 1-2 times per year.  To learn more about our next training program, contact Ruth Hill, Program Coordinator at 632-5593 or via e-mail at rhill@hospicesj.ca
• Four 4-hour evening sessions.
• Two full day Saturday sessions.
• A complete Volunteer Manual is provided free of charge.