Margit Gratz: Curriculum Spiritualität für ehrenamtliche Hospizbegleitung, BC

Blurb

Hospice volunteers are confronted with questions like "What have I done to deserve this?" or "It doesn't make sense anymore!". Many of these statements are questions of spirituality, hope, meaning of life, belief, God, or after life conception. How can hospice volunteers be prepared for dealing with these issues and prevented from being overstrained? How can hospice volunteers be kept from transmitting their own spirituality and religiosity to the dying or ill person? Inasmuch as in a plural and multicultural society it is essential to follow the guiding principle that spirituality is what a person says it is. This is true for the ill person as well as for the volunteer. Spiritual support takes place in cooperation with pastoral care in situ. Training requires acceptance and mindfulness concerning the volunteer's and the patient's spirituality. The curriculum offers suggestions to create lessons distributed over eleven themes respectively modules, i. e. coping, existential crises, spiritual needs, religions and cultures. The curriculum includes an amount of teaching material to develop each lesson. Course aims, contents and methods can be individually adjusted. Institutions can fit their individual guidelines into the training concept: Both the institution's understanding of spirituality and of spiritual care and their ideas of volunteer's tasks and forms of action can be incorporated.