Claxton-Oldfield Stephen, Gosselin Natasha
Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada.
Am J Hosp Palliat Care. 2011 Jun;28(4):271-5. doi: 10.1177/1049909110385540. Epub 2010 Nov 4.
A total of 143 adults were asked to imagine that they had recently been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. After reading about the roles of hospice palliative care volunteers, participants were asked whether they would use the services of a volunteer to help them and their loved ones get through this difficult time. The vast majority (94.4%) of the participants said they would choose to have a volunteer. These participants were then asked to rate the importance of 23 different supportive tasks that volunteers can perform. These tasks reflected the different kinds of support--emotional, social, practical, informational, and religious/spiritual--that hospice palliative care volunteers typically provide. Overall, the practical support category (eg, ''Having the volunteer run errands for me'') received the highest mean importance rating. Significant gender differences were found for the categories of emotional support (eg, ''Having the volunteer hold my hand'') and social support (eg, ''Having the volunteer share hobbies and interests with me''), with females rating both of these kinds of support as being more important to them than males did. The findings of this study may have practical implications for volunteer program coordinators.
共有143名成年人被要求想象他们最近被诊断出患有一种危及生命的疾病。在阅读了临终关怀姑息治疗志愿者的角色后，参与者被问及他们是否会使用志愿者的服务来帮助他们和他们所爱的人度过这段艰难时期。绝大多数（94.4%）的参与者表示他们会选择有一名志愿者。然后，这些参与者被要求对志愿者可以执行的23项不同支持任务的重要性进行评分。这些任务反映了临终关怀姑息治疗志愿者通常提供的不同类型的支持——情感、社交、实际、信息和宗教/精神支持。总体而言，实际支持类别（例如，“让志愿者帮我跑腿”）获得了最高的平均重要性评分。在情感支持类别（例如，“让志愿者握住我的手”）和社交支持类别（例如，“让志愿者与我分享爱好和兴趣”）中发现了显著的性别差异，女性认为这两种支持对她们比男性更重要。这项研究的结果可能对志愿者项目协调员具有实际意义。
