What is it about?
We surveyed organisations providing palliative care throughout the Flemish healthcare system about their volunteering practices in care provision. Volunteers provide direct patient care to people with terminal illnesses and their relatives both in specialised palliative care services and in generalist care services. The most prominent tasks for volunteers are psychosocial, existential and signalling care tasks. The training provided to volunteers is extensive, but varies in range and content across organisation types. Organisations indicate recruitment of volunteers is the most important challenge. However, where volunteers provided practical support to people who could no longer function independently, legal and financial challenges also emerged in maintaining the volunteering force.
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Why is it important?
Facing increased resource constraints in professional healthcare, many governments, including the Belgian government, expect informal caregivers to take up an increased share of care provision, including volunteers. However, while gaining traction in scientific literature in recent years, not much is known about volunteering in palliative care. This is the first study to systematically survey what volunteers do and what support they receive across a healthcare system and can serve as a first step for organisations to benchmark themselves as well as provide the necessary context for policy makers preparing this shift.
Perspectives
Many misconceptions about volunteers in palliative care, their position and their function still exist at the professional and policy level. What this study shows is that volunteer care is unique and complementary to professional care but that it requires training and support. I believe the idea that volunteers are an easy and cheap remedy to shortages in staff and funding is misguided and harmful to quality of care provision. Important to note is that most organisations found it hard to find new volunteers. I hope our article is a first step in showing the value of volunteers, but also is able to indicate the necessity of investing in support.
Steven Vanderstichelen
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Palliative care volunteerism across the healthcare system: A survey study, Palliative Medicine, May 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0269216318772263.
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