READING, Pa. – Reading Hospital is seeking volunteers for its \u201cNo One Dies Alone\u201d program.<\/p>\n
“We need to know to love each other, to respect each other, even as we are going out of this world,” said Deanna Schrawder, volunteer coordinator for Reading Hospital.<\/p>\n
“We have volunteers from the community come in and sit with patients that are near end of life, and they don’t have either family nearby or they just don’t have family that’s involved,” said Tina Figueroa, manager of spiritual care and volunteer services for Reading Hospital.<\/p>\n
“You never know what they had gone through in life, so this might be their only connection to anybody,” said Schrawder, who has volunteered a number of times with the No One Dies Alone program. “They might not have been able to talk to someone for a long period of time.”<\/p>\n
Volunteers are trained on the physical aspects of someone dying, addressing spiritual care and other expectations of the role.<\/p>\n
“We’re really looking for anybody who is passionate and compassionate about helping others and being there in a very difficult and vulnerable time for a patient,” said Figueroa.<\/p>\n
“You always want to be very respectful of them when you sit with them,” said Schrawder. “I always hold their hand and let them know, ‘Hi, I’m Deanna, I’m here to sit with you for a little while, just to let you know that I’m here. We can play music or I can read to you.’ Just because they are not awake or alert doesn’t mean that they are not there.”<\/p>\n
Once trained, volunteers are put into an on-call pool, and whoever is available will go when the call comes.<\/p>\n
“The nurses can’t be with that patient around the clock; they have other patients to take care of, and it helps the nurses take that burden off of them,” Schrawder said.<\/p>\n
“Having a volunteer there to serve as that supporting presence in a very vulnerable moment is very important to us,” added Figueroa.<\/p>\n
If you would like to volunteer for the No One Dies Alone program, you can contact Reading Hospital Volunteer Services at 484-628-8477.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – Reading Hospital is seeking volunteers for its \u201cNo One Dies Alone\u201d program. “We need to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[55844,51211,28,128,130,129,2791,55845,15881],"class_list":{"0":"post-117776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-deanna-schrawder","9":"tag-no-one-dies-alone","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-reading-city","12":"tag-reading-city-headlines","13":"tag-reading-city-news","14":"tag-reading-hospital","15":"tag-tina-figuero","16":"tag-volunteering"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}