Introduction Hospice volunteers have been credited with bringing a unique human dimension to an otherwise clinical setting and are considered to be core members of interdisciplinary palliative care teams.

This study looks at volunteers who have a mainly patient contact role within the Hospice.

Over 100 000 volunteers are currently within the hospice movement – contributing more than 18 million hours of work to their services each year yet they remain a largely under-researched group.

Aims

• ▶ This study hopes to give this under researched group the opportunity to share their experiences with the Hospice and prospective volunteers

• ▶ To understand the motivating factors for patient contact volunteers

• ▶ To explore the experiences of those volunteers

• ▶ To understand the profile of the volunteers, to aid future recruitment of new volunteers and target training and support.

Methods

• ▶ Qualitative study of the experiences of patient contact volunteers using semi structured interviews

• ▶ Ethics approval granted from Edge Hill University Ethics committee and the Integrated Hospice Governance Group

• ▶ Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used.

Results

• ▶ 8 semi structured interviews conducted

• ▶ Volunteers are drawn to hospice work to make a difference

• ▶ Primary motivation is to discover more about themselves and others

• ▶ Relatively few negative challenges encountered

• ▶ Any negatives are cancelled out by the positive benefits gained

• ▶ Capacity for personal growth is strengthened

• ▶ Generic knowledge of symptoms would benefit the support they give.

Conclusions

• ▶ Volunteering is a two way process

• ▶ The ‘Psychological Contract’ between the Hospice and its volunteers is very healthy

• ▶ The organisation has good role deployment, shared values and good level's of communication.

Further developments

• ▶ Volunteer inductions adapted to meet the training needs of individuals (eg, boundaries of care, consideration of first aid training for drivers)

• ▶ Development of individual ‘Psychological Contracts’ between the hospice and volunteers.