Volunteers provide care, therapy for hospice patients

METRO DETROIT — A loved one’s decision to enter hospice care can begin a daunting and scary time for families, but volunteers providing supporting care for their loved ones can make it a little bit easier.

Ruth Moore-Lilly, Hospice of Michigan’s volunteer program coordinator, said volunteers give additional support to patients and families during hospice care.

“Providing companionship, caregiver relief — just a more personal side where the patient doesn’t really feel like a patient,” Moore-Lilly said.

Hospice is end-of-life care, or palliative care. The volunteers provide a wide range of services, including caregiver relief, pet therapy, music therapy and much more.

“It’s really just providing that extra special support at a very sacred time,” Moore-Lilly said.

Hospice patients range in age from infants to the elderly. Their diagnoses range as well, but all are terminal.

Families can request hospice through referrals by the patient or through a doctor.

“Once a patient’s on our service, the clinical team — the nurses, the social workers, the spiritual care advisors — they’re always assessing patients to see if they would desire something from a volunteer,” Moore-Lilly said. “And they make those referrals to the volunteer coordinator, who then starts the process to match a volunteer with a patient.”

Volunteers can meet a patient at their care facility or at their home. Usually, only one volunteer visits at a time, but Moore-Lilly said they may have more than one volunteer visit each week.

Crystal Hickerson, the volunteer coordinator at Brighton Hospice, said it’s the job of the volunteer to provide companionship for the patient.

“It’s a nonclinical way to bring support to the hospice patient and to provide for the caregiver a little bit of relief,” Hickerson said. “Just knowing someone else is visiting with their loved one without it not necessarily being just someone coming to do a test or something like that.”

Hickerson said that hospice started as a volunteer service. Around the 1980s, regulations were put in place in the United States to require hospice organizations to provide volunteer support and services.

She said Medicare makes sure volunteers are utilized and requires that 5% of the organization’s staff hours are volunteered across its teams, including administration.

Some volunteers are students in pre-med or other medical-related fields of study. Hickerson said these students get firsthand experience in the end-of-life process.

“We want them as they go in their role as a physician to know about what the end-of-life services are and that hospice is available and what it’s really about,” Hickerson said.

She said that even though they might not go into a field dealing with the end of life, it gives them knowledge about the process and when to refer someone to hospice.

“And that’s crucial, because again, like I said, in America, it’s only been here since the ‘80s, so it takes a while for some physicians to understand, even though they’re in the medical field,” Hickerson said.

She said she always asks any volunteer why they chose hospice, because it is so specific.

“There’s so many regulations around it; it’s almost like a job,” Hickerson said.

She said volunteers stay because they learn a lot from their patients.

“Just being there for someone and the humanity of it all,” Hickerson said. “It’s really great when we have younger volunteers who go out and see our patients.”

Tom Kallas and his dog, a Newfoundland named Kevin, provide pet therapy to the patients they visit.

He started volunteering two years ago, after his wife found an article about pet volunteering.

“And she showed it to me. I was recently retired, and I contacted them, and I’ve been involved with them now for the last couple years,” Kallas said.

Kallas volunteers at other places with Kevin in addition to Hospice of Michigan. He said that after 40 years of working, he was in a place mentally to want to give back.

“I spent 40 years trying to accumulate enough wealth to be able to retire, and after I retired, I just had an inner urge to do some volunteering, to do some giveback,” Kallas said.

Kallas’ training prepared him for patient deaths. He said that over long periods of time, he’s created relationships with them and their families.

“When you lose that person that you’ve seen every single week for a year, you know, it’s tough. It’s really, really tough,” Kallas said. “At the same time, you have to have in your mind the fact that you know what you were doing is doing good for that patient, and you knew going into it what the outcome was most likely going to be.”

Kallas said visits are memorable when families get together with the patient and take part in the services. He said families are very appreciative of his company.

“You’ve never seen anybody appreciate something like the families that have hospice involved,” Kallas said.

He said some of the work his fellow volunteers do is incredible.

“It’s selfless,” Kallas said.

Moore-Lilly said she thinks volunteers provide their time and companionship unconditionally.

“Volunteers aren’t expecting anything in return. They just have a heart to be with somebody,” Moore-Lilly said.

While she has worked in health care all her life, Moore-Lilly said it was not always with hospice. She started volunteering before she was employed by the organization. Hospice of Michigan and Brighton Hospice are just two of many hospice care providers in the state offering an array of services.

She reiterated that at the end of a person’s life, everything revolves around a patient’s diagnosis, and the volunteers allow them to be a regular person outside of their diagnosis.

“Volunteers always say that they take a piece of every person that they have visited with them in their own life,” Moore-Lilly said. “And it really, you know, for me, and I do speak for other staff members and volunteers, it changes our lives.”

She said it gives her a new appreciation for what she has.

Moore-Lilly said the whole experience has been rewarding.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” Moore-Lilly said. “This is where I’ll stay for the rest of my career.”

Volunteers must be 18 to participate, and training is provided. Future volunteers also must go through a background check, fingerprinting and a tuberculosis test. They can visit the Hospice of Michigan website at hom.org or Brighton Hospice at brightonhospice.com.

“If you have a heart for other people, then you can be a hospice volunteer,” Moore-Lilly said. “You don’t have to have any special talents.”