Volunteering in end-of-life care. Challenges, problems and perspectives

Volunteering in the hospice movement has had a profound impact on generating awareness of hospice work and palliative care in the context of supporting dying persons and their relatives as well as on integrating respective services in the existing health care system. This paper focuses on two specific questions: First, it asks how society is changing with respect to dealing with dying and death, and more precisely with dying persons, which is recognizable by the integration of hospice work and palliative care in the healthcare system and related to the relevance of volunteering in the sense of a citizens' movement. Second, this paper asks what the specific roles of volunteers are as well as the possibilities and limits of voluntary practice in end-of-life care and accompaniment. To answer these questions, the pivotal objectives of the hospice movement - the transformation of the social awareness regarding dying and death, as well as the reorganization of "institutions of dying" - will first be outlined by reference to the concept of "good dying", a specific hospice attitude together with hospice culture and palliative competence. In a second step, the relevance of volunteering and the specific role of volunteers in the actual practice of hospice work and palliative care will be outlined alongside current indicators and recognizable alteration tendencies, before concluding with a discussion of the perspectives of hospices as a citizens' movement.