Special to the Regiater
The next session of Home Hospice’s Life Awareness and Death Awareness Seminar will begin at 5:30 p.m. Monday, September 14.
This free training prepares participants to serve as members of a compassionate, caring team that provides care to terminally ill patients and their families and offers an insight to hospice care. The course will be held at the Gainesville Branch of the Muenster State Bank, 1601 E Hwy 82 across from Brown Motor Company. There are 4 sessions in the series and they are September 14, 21, 28 and October 5. All sessions are on Mondays.
Volunteers with Home Hospice of Cooke County provide both practical assistance and supportive friendship to the patients and families receiving care. “They do those things that we would anticipate a good friend or neighbor to do and in so doing, become a very important part of the Home Hospice team,” said Sherry Little, Home Hospice executive director. “They might sit with the patient, read to them, run errands, provide transportation, mow a lawn, read, listen to the stories, or any one of hundreds of tasks — small and large — that make the pathway through the final months of life a little easier. We attempt to match the skills, desires and time availability of the volunteer with the particular needs and desires of the patient and family as best we can.”
This seminar which is offered at no charge, covers such topics as the basics of hospice philosophy and care, bereavement care, active listening, the psychosocial effects of terminal illness, hospice nursing and social work, volunteers guidelines and boundaries, among many other topics. “While the primary goal of this seminar is to train the wonderful people who come to us to volunteer and prepare them to help with the care of our patients and families, we also want the participants to come away with a personal understanding of their views of death and the importance of living life every day as fully as possible,” said Little.
For more information or to enroll in these classes, contact Kathi Kirby at Home Hospice of Cooke County, 665-9891.
