Changes in demographic characteristics and motives for becoming a hospice/palliative care volunteer: Results of single institution 9 years educational program.

Abstract

e265 Background: Voluntary activities are essential in many different aspects of hospice and palliative care. The interest in becoming a volunteer lowers in many communities. Better knowledge of volunteers’ characteristics and wider understanding of their motivations seem to be crucial for more sufficient volunteers’ recruitment and retain. Methods: Self-reported demographic details and data on motives for hospice / palliative care volunteering were collected from initial questionnaire forms fulfilled by all consecutive participants of the teaching course for medical voluntary cancer patients caregivers (16 editions; April-2006-November-2014; no data for 2009) at Rev. Eugeniusz Dutkiewicz Hospice SAC, Gdańsk, Poland. Results: all 562 records were analyzed: 1) mean volunteers age was 35,73+14,69 years and significant trend (p < 0.001) for increasing age was observed (e.g.: mean age values + SD were: 2007: 28.41+11.82; 2011: 37.19+14.93; 2014: 41.31+12.16); 2) the vast majority of volunteers were females (82.03%), who already completed education; 3) 67 of study participants declared professional connections with medicine (19.47%), 42 (12.21%) - pedagogy or 38 (11.05%) – psychology; 4) 241 (42.88%) volunteers declared full current professional activity, 174 (30.96%) were unemployed, 50 (8.89%) - retired; 5) participants mostly reported motives for volunteering which might be categorized as altruistic (67.08%: “I want to help others”) – the percentage increased significantly during the study period (p < 0.012); 6) the next two most frequently indicated motives represented category of personal gain (29.36%: “I want to improve my skills”; 26.87%: “volunteering is the way of my personal development” – not significant trend for time). Conclusions: 1) Results showed that some demographic features as well motives for hospice / palliative care volunteering changed over the time in our community - it warrants some individualization in recruitment process recognition for volunteers coordinators; 2) the study will continue to identify the volunteers’ subgroup with the greatest probability to retain at service for longer period of time.