Becoming A Long-term Hospital Volunteer

With the development of health care system, hospital volunteer service shows vigorous development trend in our country. It has become an important social support resources for patients and families, which is meaningful to serve patient, integrate social resources and contact the hospital and the public. With the development of the hospital volunteer service, the hospital volunteer organization has developed rapidly, however, the hospital volunteer organization still has some disadvantages in the process of development, such as the high mobility of volunteers, the waste of voluntary resources, the low quality of voluntary services and so on. As such, it is urgently to consolidate the voluntary organizations and train the long-term volunteers for hospital? The study takes the long-term volunteers in voluntary organization A as the research object, describes their experience in the process of becoming long-term hospital volunteers in the hospital through the process perspective and explores the factors which influence their long-term voluntary service.The study found that there are three stages to become a long-term volunteer in hospital: initial stage, growth stage and mature stage. The three stages are also tortuous process and the hospital volunteers has different challenges in each stage. In the initial stage, personal motivation and external conditions provide the conditions and possibilities to engage in volunteer service; In the growth stage, long-term hospital volunteers experienced difficult period and got the adaptive growth, it is essential to continue volunteer service for the realization of the motives and the growth ability; In the mature stage, long-term hospital volunteers continue the volunteer service in the realization of personal happiness and satisfaction, personal change, the circle of friends and the influence of the organization’s approval and recognition,but volunteer service is still facing difficulties and challenges, at the same time,the mature stage does not mean the end result, it is still a dynamic process for the hospital volunteers and they are also likely to end the volunteer service at any time. Throughout the three stages, it is also a progressive layers of process for becoming long-term hospital volunteers. Finally, the study put forward some suggestions for the process theory of the voluntary organization A, the characteristic of the hospital volunteer service in our country and the problem in the process of volunteer service.