Sandra Owens has a decade of experience in hospice volunteer management under her belt, but these days she works for free.
Following an early career in real estate, Owens transitioned to health care starting in the vascular lab at Mercy. Owens switched to volunteer coordinator for Mercy HospiceCare in the organization’s home health division where she oversaw a volunteer staff of more than 100 people.
“I just thought ‘it’s destined’,” she says. “Hospice is such a unique area of the medical field – you either hate it or fall in love with it. I just fell in love with it.”
Following her time at Mercy, she spent two years as an independent consultant. Bringing her experience with volunteer recruitment, screening, training and retention, she assisted numerous Missouri hospice organizations to help organize their volunteer operations.
One such company was Omega Health Care of Southwest Missouri Inc. With sites throughout Missouri and Kansas, Omega extended Owens an offer of employment for a temporary position from 2011–12. Since the position’s end, Owens has continued on as a volunteer, sharing the benefit of her experience with the individuals and families Omega serves. Her volunteer time fluctuates from an average of four hours weekly to two days a week, depending on need.
Hospice has only become commonplace in the U.S. during the last 30 years, and the need is increasing rapidly, Owens says. The $19 billion hospice and palliative care industry has averaged growth of just under 10 percent annually since 2007, and employs more than 200,000 people nationwide, according to business research firm IBISWorld.
“Hospice takes a special kind of volunteer,” she says. “Not that I consider myself special in any way, but it takes a certain type of person to do this kind of work. Some people are completely comfortable with the end-of-life environment, others never will be.”
Owens says the first hospice organizations formed in the U.S. during the 1980s were nonprofit or volunteer based. Today, Owens says hospice organizations have become increasingly privatized and government regulations require each organization maintain a ratio of at least five percent volunteer to paid staff hours.
“Not a lot of people know that,” Owens says. “But it is such an emotionally and physically draining time for a family. To help that family get through, a volunteer plays a very key role.”
With the goal of allowing the dying patient to remain in their home for as long as possible, a hospice team is typically made up of a nurse, social worker, home health or nurses aide, chaplain and one volunteer.
“They are seeking palliative care, not curative care,” she says. “It’s an end-of-life stage, and they usually have to have a caregiver with them around the clock.”
“There is a definite and great need for volunteers,” Owens says. “It’s a privilege to serve those patients and their families at this stage in their lives.”[[In-content Ad]]
