Palliative Care Volunteers See Less Face Time, Less Community Visibility During Pandemic

There are many dimensions to palliative care that need to be considered when patients are facing serious or terminal illnesses. The aspect that Neepawa District Palliative Care offers is not medical support but human contact, including companionship at end of life and after a serious diagnosis, and offering respite for families caring for a loved one in the home or in a facility. As committee chair Judy Gabler, a retired nurse, puts it, they do not provide the hands-on care but serve as the eyes and ears for the patient. Those caregiving services are the ones that have seen the most destructive impact from the pandemic.

Volunteer services have been almost entirely on hold since early 2020, particularly within hospitals and care homes where visitors and any non-essential personnel have at times been completely prohibited. Even Palliative Care’s one part-time staff member was not able to access her office space within the hospital and moved to working from home for the duration.

It’s not just the in-person services that have been hampered. All publications have been stored away to reduce touch surfaces and the committee has been unable to stock snack foods and other care items for families of patients.

However, the organisation has carried on all the same. It operates under an entirely volunteer committee, which includes community members and representatives from the ministerial and grief support groups, and with just one staff member alongside many volunteers who go through extensive training. The committee originally worked under the local health authority but became an independent organisation in 2002 and is entirely reliant on donation dollars for its operations.

“If you aren’t faced with it, you might not know what’s out there,” says Gabler, referring not just to the palliative care organisation, which gets many of its volunteers from those who were once on the other side of the service, but to projects such as the Healing Garden which is planted and cared for by palliative care volunteers.

The work of the organisation is not possible without the support of the community. Anyone wanting to support Neepawa District Palliative Care can find their information on the Prairie Mountain Health Authority website at prairiemountainhealth.ca.