Helping Them Live Until They Die: Volunteer Practices in Palliative Home Care

Abstract

Volunteers traditionally play an essential role in palliative care. Without them, many community and institutional programs would not survive. Despite the significant number of volunteers involved in palliative care, the nature and scope of their actions remain ambiguous. The blurred boundaries of their contribution create tensions between professionals, families, and volunteers with regards to patient care and sharing of responsibilities. This article reports on a comprehensive and descriptive qualitative study aimed at understanding volunteer practices in home palliative care in Canada through analysis of volunteers' discourse. The conceptual framework not only allows for a description of volunteer practices but also for an understanding of those practices in terms of the meaning volunteers ascribe to their actions and interactions. The information gathered provides a better understanding of the place of volunteers within the palliative care system, thereby allowing communities to optimize their contribution to the palliative care mission.

High-Stakes Volunteer Commitment

“…We encourage scholars to examine their applicability to other HSV activities-notably, long-term service to terminally ill groups, which has garnered particular interest in past research (e.g., Sevigny et al, 2010;Starnes & Wymer, 2000). Still, this analysis does not presume to represent an exhaustive, interminable view of antecedents, experiences, and outcomes of HSV service.…”

“…In response to calls for more systematic theories of volunteering (see Hustinx, Cnaan, & Handy, 2010), a central goal of this study is to promote explanatory and narrative theoretical insight into this area of volunteering. We adopted a qualitative approach given that there is limited research on this topic (cf., Fox, 2006;Lois, 1999;Sevigny, Dumont, Cohen, & Frappier, 2010;Yanay & Yanay, 2008), and, as Wilson (2012) recently contended, "more needs to be learned about the volunteer experience itself, including how volunteers relate to clients, paid staff, and other volunteers" (p. 201). We adopted a qualitative approach given that there is limited research on this topic (cf., Fox, 2006;Lois, 1999;Sevigny, Dumont, Cohen, & Frappier, 2010;Yanay & Yanay, 2008), and, as Wilson (2012) recently contended, "more needs to be learned about the volunteer experience itself, including how volunteers relate to clients, paid staff, and other volunteers" (p. 201).…”

The boundaries of care work: a comparative study of professionals and volunteers in Denmark and Australia

“…The models draw attention to negotiations, processes and strategies, which is consistent with previous studies (Sévigny et al . ) while linking those to higher principles of division of labour. By adopting a theoretical approach to the study of boundaries, researchers will be able to move from merely descriptive accounts of what volunteers do to an understanding of the principles that guide specific divisions of labour.…”

“…Volunteers are integral to the history of hospices and palliative care and continue to play a vital role (Sévigny et al . , Morris et al . ), which is reflected in the substantial number of studies dedicated to palliative care volunteering.…”

‘Being with’ or ‘doing for’? How the role of an end-of-life volunteer befriender can impact patient wellbeing: interviews from a multiple qualitative case study (ELSA)

“…Studies tend to explore issues such as the volunteer experience [14–16], the nature of their role [17], their interaction with professional staff [18], the ethics of working as a volunteer [19] and the impact on their own health [20]. Satisfaction with services has tended to be explored from the perspective of volunteers or the services they work with rather than those of the people who receive care [21–23].…”