VOLUNTEER: An offer of support during the tough times
Today, he assists in training new hospice care volunteers.
Hoover’s volunteer career started in the UMass Memorial’s emergency room, talking to patients.
Hoover is a soft-spoken Pennsylvania native with a distinctive Philly-area accent, who retired from Clinton-based Nypro Inc. after a 24-year career. The psychic reward he got from the volunteer experience more than made up for the requirement of the time for volunteers to wear pink jackets, he said with a smile. It was at that time that he found out about the hospice volunteer program, and underwent the eight weeks of training one night a week, learning various ways to offer physical, spiritual, and emotional support.
In the ensuing years, he has helped clients with mobility problems, run their errands, played monopoly, read to them, or simply sat in the room while they slept. And he has learned from them. "I’ve always been struck by how much the visits mean" to hospice clients and their families.
"Sometimes I would leave and wonder what I had done that was of any value," he said. But the human contact, he said, is of vital importance. He recalled with awe one dying client who always thanked him for visiting. And he said that in his five years as a hospice volunteer, "I don’t think there was any [patient] that said, ‘poor me.’"
A widely-quoted hospice care statistic is that many recipients enroll in the last two weeks of their lives, when it’s often too late to benefit from the comprehensive counseling services hospice care offers. If people knew more about hospice, Hoover noted, many might seek help earlier.
"The family needs help as well as the patient," he said.
UMass hospice volunteers also act as sentinels. If they see anything potentially dangerous, such as a patient’s forgetfulness about taking medications, they are to contact the hospice office immediately.
Hospice care also encompasses the meeting of individuals’ emotional needs.
UMass Memorial Hospital Volunteer Coordinator Kathy Drew said companionship is key. Listening to patients, reading to them, taking them outside for fresh air – or helping them conduct a life review. Sometimes it’s spoken, sometimes tape recorded or typed.
"Bob is awesome at all that," she said, and with families as well. She recalls one such family of caregivers with a patient at home. Hoover visited to provide them respite time, but they chose to stay and talk with him rather than run their errands.
Drew described Hoover as a valued resource, always willing to help with a new case. Last month, he received a five-year volunteer appreciation award.
But, he said, the reward has been his.
– Christina P. O’Neill
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