For Volunteers

Volunteers are vital members of the palliative care team. The Canadian Virtual Hospice recognizes that palliative care volunteers spend their time supporting some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The dedication and support shown by volunteers is one reason palliative care is so widely regarded as compassionate care.

For Volunteers is intended for volunteers and volunteer managers to showcase and share valuable resource material so that we may benefit from each other’s experiences. 
 

Volunteer Resources
Becoming Dead Right: A Hospice Volunteer in Urban Nursing Homes This book honors every person's entitlement to a peaceful, pain-free death, with true stories about hospice patients and...
The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying An exquisite memoir about how to live—and love—every day with “death in the room,” from poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young...
Cancer is a Human Experience: Six-part video series This series of short videos focuses on the patient and family experience around the impacts of advanced cancer, treatment,...
Communicating at the End of Life: Finding Magic in the Mundane Recounts the stories of Foster and six other volunteers and their communicative experiences with dying patients, using communication...
Conversations on Dying: A Palliative Care Pioneer Faces His Own Death Dr. Larry Librach was a well known  leader in the field of Palliative Care, including being the Director of the Tammy Latner...
Courageous Parents Network A website which provides parents and families of children living with serious illness with expert guidance and a virtual...
Death By Design (podcast) We must become the designer of our own destination. We must learn how to build the pathways to our last chapter by creating...
'Does cancer not care I have plans?': Terminal diagnosis forces author to grab hold of life Listen to a conversation with author Kate Bowler who was interviewed on "The Current" (CBC radio). Kate is the author of...
Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of...
Hospice Volunteering (Blog) A Canadian who has worked as a hospice volunteer for 11+ years has created a blog to share information and support with other...
The Compassionate Community Startup Toolkit The Compassionate Community Startup Toolkit will equip you with essential information about the Compassionate Community framework...
GetPalliativeCare.org Getpalliativecare. org is an American website which provides  palliative care information for people coping with serious,...
How to Be an Even Better Listener: A Practical Guide for Hospice and Palliative Care Volunteers Using a combination of compelling vignettes and reflective exercises, Robert Mundle provides readers with practical strategies...

For more information about becoming a volunteer, contact your local or provincial palliative care office.

Topics,  Books, Links and More, and Programs and Services are your source for accurate and detailed information on palliative care. Feel free to print and share this information.

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