VOLUNTEERS

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Volunteers are a very integral part of our services offered at Marshall Homecare & Hospice. Volunteers work together with our professional staff to provide patient, family, and administrative support. Our individualized volunteer programs provide a variety of support services and are based on the needs of the patient, the patient’s family, as well as the needs of the volunteer. Whether you prefer to assist with tasks in an office setting or to interact with our patients and families, to enhance their quality of life, every volunteer has something significant to contribute to our programs and to those we serve.

More than 400,000 trained volunteers provide more than 19 million hours of service every year. Hospice care in the U.S. was founded by volunteers and there is a continued commitment to volunteer service. Medicare regulations require that hospices have trained volunteers as part of the service they provide. Federal law requires that at least five percent of patient care hours be provided by volunteers. The 96,000 hospice volunteers throughout the U.S. are an essential part of the hospice philosophy of care which recognizes dying as more than a medical event. It recognizes dying as a personal event that is physical, emotional, and spiritual. This philosophy also recognizes the patient and the family as one unit of care. Volunteers consistently report that helping those living with a terminal diagnosis is not about dying, but about living.

It is about positively impacting those we serve to give them the best quality of life while we serve them.

To ensure that all volunteers are equipped for the opportunity of working with those we serve in hospice, Marshall Homecare & Hospice requires that volunteer’s complete orientation and on-going training sessions. To be sure that our patients and families receive the highest quality of care and services, all of our volunteers must submit to regular background checks.  You will also need to provide a copy of your valid driver’s license, valid auto insurance, social security card, and any other certifications you may possess in order to complete your application process. Once you are approved as a volunteer with Marshall Homecare & Hospice, you will go through orientation and work with our volunteer coordinator to help determine the type of volunteer opportunities that are most suited to your interests, abilities, and experiences. It is important to Marshall Homecare & Hospice that our volunteers understand the history of hospice and are aware of the specific ways we work to serve our community. Both administrative and direct patient care volunteers will receive training on the history of hospice, our care philosophy, and what our services entail as hospice providers. Our direct patient care volunteers receive additional training on a number of topics to perform multiple roles and to support our patients in various assignments. Some of these training topics include safety, fall prevention, Dementia, communication, family dynamics, the dying process, grief, and bereavement. We want our volunteers to be prepared to provide the highest standard of support to our programs, our patients, and the families we serve. While being a direct patient care volunteer can be challenging at times, you enhance the lives of so many patients and families with everything you do. Your support is priceless.

Our administrative volunteers can assist Marshall Homecare & Hospice with answering phones, making copies, filing, mailings, data entry, putting together admission packets and training materials, or anything that helps enrich our programs or assist our staff members. In addition to helping our staff with clerical duties, volunteers can support our program in groups activity settings, and through community education.

Our Hospice volunteers offer patients, families, and staff a listening ear, a helping hand, and the positive impact of a compassionate heart. Our volunteers can provide this support at a nursing home, assisted living community, hospital or personal residence. Volunteers are such a special part of the hospice care team.  To become a volunteer at with Marshall Homecare & Hospice, please complete the following application and our volunteer coordinator will contact you as soon as possible.