Partnership…the wave of the now

The resources hospice has are many. In our hospice alone we have over 800 volunteers. These are folks who have experienced loss and “get it”. They give of themselves selflessly. I was at a ceremony yesterday and on the way one of our volunteers passed by and said he had to get home to change into his military uniform to go to a hospital to perform a “Salutes” pinning. The time was 4:30 PM. That means he would be out at night doing this event. Amazing dedication! This week I was in a meeting at a local hospital meeting with their chaplain manager along with another hospital’s chaplain manager. Our hospice volunteer coordinator was in the meeting as well. A partnership was formed as we developed a strategy to train their volunteers in how to do vigil volunteering and spiritual care volunteering. Apparently, there is not a high demand for vigil in the hospital due to a number of reasons. Our approach was to invite the chaplains to send their volunteers for training and we will use them in our work and when they are needed by the hospital then they are to go there. We assured the chaplain managers that these volunteers “belonged” to the hospital and we would train them and give them some on the job experience. Uniting energies is the wave of the now. Territorialism is passé. As you can see our corps of volunteers is so high that we don’t need to “steal” others’ volunteers, just get them trained and busy. If you don’t use volunteers you lose volunteers. That is a prime reason for partnering. The timing for this endeavor was perfect. I look forward to a great relationship with these chaplains and their volunteers. I’ll let you know how it works later in the Fall.