Supervisors info:
Πατηράκη Ελισάβετ, Καθηγήτρια, Νοσηλευτική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Παπαδάτου Δανάη, Καθηγήτρια, Νοσηλευτική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Κατσαραγάκης Στυλιανός, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Νοσηλευτική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
Introduction: Volunteering in Palliative Care seems to have an emotional impact on volunteers who come into contact with the patient's suffering.
The purpose of the study was to investigate the attitudes of volunteers involved in palliative care towards death.
Materials and Methods: A total of 9 people who worked voluntarily in the Palliative Care Unit "Galilee" participated in this pilot study (response rate 20%). Due to the pandemic Covid 19, in person communication was prevented, in order to explain the aims of the research, to complete the questionnaires and to conduct interviews and this probably led to the small volunteer’s response. The study was conducted during the period December 2020 to September 2021. An anonymous, self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. It contained questions recording socio-demographic data and the questionnaire Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R), Wong PTP, Reker GT & Gesser G (1988). The data collection was done by completing the questionnaire in the context and period of selection of the participants, who were informed about the purpose of the research and signed a written consent form. The statistical analysis was performed with the IBM SPSS Statistics version 21.
Results: The majority of the sample were women, over 65 years old and the average participation in volunteering was 8.5 years. The mean score of the answers of the five factors of the DAP-R questionnaire, from the highest to the smallest, is the acceptance of death (5.81), the neutral acceptance (5.40), the escape acceptance (3.58), the fear of death (3.46) and the death avoidance (1.91), with a range of 1-7. Due to the small sample, results cannot be generalized and can only be discussed in relation to our sample. However, it seems that attitudes towards death may be influenced by age, the hours spent weekly in volunteering and the existence of volunteer’s personal loss. In particular, as age increases, the neutral attitude towards death tends to decrease, the view of death as liberation increases in proportion to the hours spent in volunteer work and finally, it seems that the existence of personal loss of a loved one plays a role in individuals who consider death as a liberation and also to those who show greater acceptance of death. In addition, all participants find the monthly support meetings very helpful and express the desire for more training and supervision.
Conclusion: Further research is needed on a larger and more representative sample as well as on newly admitted volunteers and volunteers who have quit volunteering.
Keywords:
Bereavement, Volunteers, Palliative care, Hospice, Stressors
