Veteran Hospice Volunteer: Companionship & Impact

Contact us now to be included in our Summer, 2020 training! We are taking applications!

The safety of our volunteers is a high priority for UnityPoint Hospice. Due to COVID-19, we have decided to pause on providing volunteer services in patient homes and hospice houses. We are hopeful for the day when our lives return to some sense of normalcy and the excellent support volunteers provide to our patients and teams can resume. We will be ready to on-board new volunteers!

Through this partnership, we strive to match veteran patients with volunteers who were also veterans. This allows veteran patients to be paired with a hospice volunteer who is also a veteran who may have a better understanding of what the patient has experienced. Veteran volunteers may help with:

• Providing companionship
• Life review
• Letter writing
• Respite care for caregivers needing a break
• Participating in veteran recognition
• Assisting with veteran benefits

We offer the opportunity for our veteran patients to be honored for their service through a pinning ceremony done by hospice staff. The veteran is encouraged to invite their friends and family to participate and share memories. We enjoy involving our volunteers who are veterans with pinning ceremonies for our patients and in our communities.

For all hospice volunteers:

Volunteers support patients through companionship and friendly visits. Volunteering is your opportunity to find a connection with a patient – perhaps you’ve both been fly fishing in Alaska? Or maybe you share a love of quilting or crafting? Sometimes our patients want a volunteer to read to them or play card games. Other times a family care giver wants a respite or a few hours to get groceries or lunch with a friend and they are comforted knowing that a volunteer is able to be with their loved one.

Hospice volunteers are needed to provide care and comfort to patients in their homes in our community. Volunteers must

• Be supportive of the Hospice concept
• Have successful incorporation of losses in own life
• Have the ability to maintain confidentiality
• Show emotional maturity
• Be dependable
• Utilize listening skills
• Have the ability to accept people the way they are
• Be able to work as a team member
• Have a willingness to accept supervision and guidance

Hospice does not prolong life nor does it hasten death, but instead focuses on creating a life full of comfort, dignity and peace for people in the final stages of life. Hospice addresses the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of every patient while also providing support for the entire family. The sooner a patient receives hospice care, the sooner these comforting benefits begin.

This is an incredibly rewarding opportunity to make an impact to a patient in your neighborhood.