Be a Hospice Volunteer with Cascade Health

The Role of Volunteers in Hospice

Hospice volunteers assist patients, caregivers and the hospice team. Some volunteers work directly with patients while others prefer to work behind the scenes or supporting surviving families. Whatever your passion and skills, there are ways you can contribute.

Direct Patient Care Opportunities

• Provide companionship to patients in their homes, facilities or at Pete Moore Hospice House.

• Assist patients and their caregivers with personal or light household care, such as helping with chores.

• Professional service providers, such as massage therapists, acupuncturists, art therapists and others may choose to donate their time to provide complimentary care. State Licensure and renewal required for hands-on care.

• Play music, sing, help a patient record their story for their family or provide other creative services.

• Help a patient write letters or complete other projects that are important to them.

• Take a patient’s beloved pet for a walk or to a vet appointment.

• Read or play games with a patient or their loved ones.

• Hold vigil for patients whose family or friends cannot be with them at the end. 

• Provide respite care for caregivers, giving them a chance to care for themselves or take care of other pressing business.

Other Opportunities

• Provide clerical help to the hospice department, such as putting family resource binders together, compiling bereavement mailings or filing.

• Deliver flowers to bereaved families or write notes to provide condolences.

Hospice Volunteers Do NOT

• Personal care- bathing, shaving, toileting, nail clipping, hair cut/curling/ironing.

• Medications- volunteers may not handle, offer, or dispense medications (prescription or over the counter)

• Feeding- While volunteers can help prepare a snack, they may not assist patients with eating or drinking.

• Patient transfer- Whether from bed to wheelchair or wheelchair to bed/couch.

• Driving- Volunteers are not permitted to transport patients or caregivers in their personal vehicles.

• Heavy-duty cleaning or yardwork

• Financial or legal planning

Qualities of a Good Hospice Volunteer

Working with patients in hospice can be transformative for volunteers as well as patients. But it also requires a willingness to open your heart to people you know you will lose and to be present in emotionally charged situations. Hospice volunteers must therefore be compassionate and mature people who believe that everyone deserves love and care at the end of life. Other helpful qualities include:

• A high degree of patience.

• Dependability and commitment to ensure continuity of care for your patients and their families.

• Ability to maintain a calming, nonreactive presence when stressful situations or emotions arise.

• Listening well and without judgment.

• Comfort in silence.

• Respect for beliefs and customs that may not align with your own.

• A strong understanding of your own feelings about death and dying and comfort working with people nearing death and grieving.

• Comfort being in someone else’s home, retirement community or nursing facility.