Services

Client Volunteers provide the following services:  

• Thoroughly explain all the different options for dying well and how to achieve them; including stopping life-preserving medical treatments, seeking palliative care, entering hospice, voluntarily stopping eating and drinking with the support of hospice, palliative sedation, and medical aid in dying.
• Help people navigate through their dying process, from beginning to end.  Sometimes this takes days, sometimes weeks or months: sometimes 1-2 meetings, sometimes many more.
• Offer advice and support to help clients, whose wishes are not being met or who are not getting adequate pain or symptom management, advocate for themselves.
• Meet with families to help facilitate discussions about the client’s end-of-life wishes.
• Provide information and support to family members regarding the process of their loved one’s dying, what to expect and how they can best provide compassionate and helpful support.
• Extend support and reassurance to the client as he/she navigates through the process of accessing medical aid in dying. Often this includes helping clients find a physician willing to prescribe MAID, or helping a physician find a consulting physician who will also participate.  We are also committed to helping individuals or their loved ones advocate for themselves to obtain needed services or adequate pain control.
• Bring an experienced, calm and reassuring presence on the day of planned death. We also help review instructions and provide bedside support and comfort to both the client and family.
• Assist in completing or understanding advance directives.