Texas Home Health Hospice

The most remarkable people volunteer in the hospice field, with many finding the experience immensely rewarding. Everyone will be touched by hospice in one way or another in their lives and what you learn with us will be of great value to you and with whom you share your new-found knowledge.

Why volunteer for hospice and why now?

Not only is the hospice experience fascinating, but your resume stating you have hospice experience, will be a giant plus for you.

What do volunteers do in hospice?

Our volunteers contribute to our organization in many ways, including providing companionship to our patients who live at home or in one of the many facilities in our 16-county area, as well as helping our Austin office staff with their clerical responsibilities. It is the volunteer's choice.

What is hospice?

In very general terms, hospice serves terminally ill patients and their family members by providing supportive and palliative care. Hospice is not brought in to cure a person with a terminal condition. Besides providing for patients’ comfort, hospice is responsible for maintaining their safety and privacy. Since volunteers in hospice are part of our care team, our volunteers, as with all our employees, must become familiar with the "hospice" team concept, philosophy, and approach to end-of-life issues. Also, your emotional well-being is our concern; we want you to be prepared in everyway for this type of work, which can be very rewarding. Not surprising then, our volunteer orientation process is more involved than simply walking in and immediately contributing.

What are the training requirements and process?

First of all, our volunteers must be 18 years of age or older. We require that our prospective hospice volunteers complete an application packet, read our hospice manual, and thereafter attend our in-office training, which includes watching DVDs covering all aspects of hospice service and the volunteers’ role. You will also meet some of the nurses, chaplains and social workers to get their perspective. Since the safety and confidentiality of our patients and clients are paramount, our application packet includes a consent form giving us permission to perform a simple background check. If your goal is to work directly with patients and their caregivers, you will also be tested for TB (at the company’s expense). All the training will take place in our office 3520 Executive Center Drive, Ste 320 Austin,TX.

What happens once the training is completed?

After successfully completing our training, you'll be eligible for your first assignment as a member of our hospice team. IF you choose to visit patients, we will match you up with a patient who lives a reasonable distance from you. You are never obligated to accept a patient assignment.

However, once an assignment is accepted we ask that our volunteers visit their patient(s) one to two times a month at a minimum. A visit should last 30 minutes to an hour; however, our patients can tire easily and in those cases a shorter visit is appropriate. If volunteers want to spend more time with their patient in any given month, then the better! The volunteer coordinator will always go with the volunteer for their initial visit - these joint visits are stress-free and a great way to work on rapport-building with patients and family members.

We know that our volunteers have their own lives and may have other volunteer obligations in addition to our hospice. Consequently, our volunteer program gives its volunteers the flexibility to blend their volunteer experience with us with the life they are living.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have. We look forward to meeting you.