"iDoctor – Medical Blog"

To recruit and retain volunteers, coordinators need to understand volunteers’ motivations. In this study, 351 volunteers from 32 hospices in the western United States answered questions on a mailed survey about their motivations. The motivations reported were, in order of overall importance: to help others and learn, foster social relationships, feel better, and pursue career goals. Younger volunteers reported stronger career motivations, and retired and unemployed volunteers reported stronger social motivations. Volunteer coordinators should consider these motivations in communicating with potential and current volunteers, with special emphasis on compassion for those in need and the importance of helping, on fostering hospice volunteering as a learning experience, and in accessing and building social networks around hospice volunteering.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Health news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.