The Lazarus Hospice is looking for volunteers!
You would like to be there for people at the end of their life.
Volunteer involvement gives you the opportunity to take part in a meaningful, personally rewarding activity.
Through this you can offer an expression of your compassion and come in contact with other like-minded people who are glad to offer their contribution and their commitment.
The Lazarus Hospice offers those interested in volunteer work a variety of job opportunities. The main work is the end-of-life care.
Here you can:
- seeing dying people through their last hours
- building trusting relationships to critically ill human beings and their relations
- taking walks, cooking and baking, fulfilling final wishes
Alongside this you can also bring your energy to the so-called “patient distant” activities of the hospice. For example in the Friends of the Lazarus Hospice Association in fundraising, in public relations, the office organization and in our hospice library, but also hands-on activities such as the work in the hospice kitchen, tending to our green plants and our sun terrace.
At the beginning of a voluntary commitment to Lazarus Hospice, we invite you to a personal interview in which you can compare your expectations with our realities and clarify any questions you have with us.
Before setting a date with you for the interview, we request that you complete the following questionnaire and send it back to us by the post, Fax or e-mail.
As soon as we have received your completed questionnaire we will contact you by telephone.
Volunteer questionnaire
Please send the completed questionnaire to:
Lazarus Hospice Ambulatory Care Services
Bernauer Str. 115-118
13355 Berlin
Fax: 030 46705-277
e-mail
We are looking forward to meeting you!
The preparation course
People who most wish to become involved in the direct end-of-life care, we prepare for this demanding task in a training course. Participants in the preparation course first make a commitment, for at least two years, to work on a regular basis voluntarily in our hospice services. At the start of the course a €250.00 fee is collected. The course fee can also be paid out in installments.
The preparation course (read more: Lazarus Hospiz Aktuell Ausgabe 3/2018) for voluntary end-of-life care carefully guides the participant in the psychosocial support of critically ill and dying people as well as their family members.
The course includes a total of 70 hours of theory. This section is divided into an introductory course and an in-depth course with at least 30 hours of practical activities in the company of patients.
Basic Course
The Introductory Course is made up of three weekend workshops and three sessions held in the evening spread out over a period of three months. In the introductory course the participants get to know the principles of the hospice movement and learn essentials about the parameters for hospice work in Germany. The participants develop tools for their encounters with people in the last phase of their life. Some of these are:
- Training in self-awareness and self-reflection
- Sensitization for the situation and feelings of other people
- Practice in sensitive communication techniques (verbal und nonverbal)
- Recognizing and respecting ones own limits and the limits of other people
The participants deal intensively and in a personal way with the subject of dying, death and bereavement. Their own experiences of grieving or letting go form the basis for a deepening of the understanding of this process of life. Our methodological approach is through text work, role-play, exercises in a group, individually or with a partner, work with creative media, practical case studies and group exchanges.
This requires that each participant is prepared to concentrate on their own experiences, their own biography, as well as on the other people – first those of the other course participants, later those of the patients and their families.
Practical experience
The practical activity in the support of patients begins at the end of the introductory course. All participants are introduced personally and individually into the field of work and its structure. The participants learn practical possibilities and also to know the limits in providing support, and from this point on visit patients regularly one to two times a week.
The work location is at our own residential hospice, a nursing home or the home of a patient. Since the main focus of our work is in the field of ambulatory care (that means in the home environment of the those affected), all participants must show a fundamental willingness to visit critically ill and dying people also in their homes.
In-depth course
The in-depth course begins parallel to the first encounters with patients. Like the introductory course it is made up of three weekend workshops and three sessions held in the evening spread out over a period of three months. The participants intensify here once again, the work on individual themes, for example, such as biography work, risks in the role as support person, and the fundamental understanding of the grieving process. The special challenges in the support of patients with dementia at the end of their life are discussed in detail in the in-depth course.
In the advanced course the participants also have the opportunity during meetings about practical training to compare notes on their first practical experiences in caring for the dying, to reflect on difficult situations and to develop solution strategies.
Course completion
At the end of the course the instructor speaks individually with the participant to set the path for the future work in the Lazarus Hospice.
The participants have the choice between a variety of near patient and distant patient activities.
In order for self-reflection and learning also to continue after completion of the preparation course, all volunteers in our hospice continue to take part once a month in a review on practice or a supervision. The leadership of the preparation courses is undertaken by a palliative nursing care specialist.
