The palliative care volunteer in 2020

Australia’s changing social demographic and subsequent flow-on effects to volunteer recruitment presents a challenge to palliative care volunteering. Whilst the ACT’s volunteer enrolement leads the country, it can also expect to be subject to the impact of an aging population who themselves may require increasingly higher levels of support near the end of life. How might a response be fashioned to these broad social changes that will preserve the place of the volunteer in palliative care and enable the role to transform to a changing social world? The data collected aim at answering the following questions: - Identify how current volunteers envision the profile and context of their role in eight years time, - Identify those elements of their current role that should be maintained, and - Consider innovations to the role that respond to social changes. Data based on 4 focus groups with a total of 28 participants (semi structured questions.). 4 transcripts with 28 data sources, recorded on a digital recorder and then converted into text. Ethics reviewed by the Calvary Health Care (Australian Capital Territory) and ACU Ethics committees.

澳大利亚不断变化的社会人口结构及其对志愿者招募产生的连锁效应，给姑息治疗（palliative care）志愿服务带来了挑战。尽管澳大利亚首都领地（Australian Capital Territory, ACT）的志愿者注册人数位居全国前列，但该地区也将面临人口老龄化的冲击——老龄化人口本身在临终阶段可能需要日益增高的照护支持。应如何针对这些广泛的社会变革制定应对方案，既能保留志愿者在姑息治疗领域的定位，又能推动该角色适配不断变化的社会环境？本次采集的数据旨在解答以下问题：
1. 明确现有志愿者对自身岗位在八年后的定位与所处环境的设想；
2. 梳理当前岗位中应当予以保留的核心要素；
3. 探讨适配社会变革的岗位创新路径。数据来源于4组焦点小组访谈（focus groups），共计28名参与者，访谈采用半结构化问题（semi-structured questions）设计。共生成4份转录文本（transcripts），包含28个数据源，访谈内容通过数字录音设备录制后转换为书面文本。本研究已通过卡尔弗利医疗保健（澳大利亚首都领地）与ACU伦理委员会的伦理审查。