ABSTRACT
Background: Across Europe palliative and end-of-life-care volunteer services (EOLC-VS) in the hospital setting are relatively uncommon, particularly for patients in the last weeks of life. The iLIVE Volunteer Study, one of 8 work-packages within the iLIVE Project, conducted an international Delphi study to develop a European Core Curriculum for EOLC-VC's, including associated training manuals. The ECC was designed to empower Volunteer Coordinators (VC's) to develop and implement EOLC-VS's in 5 hospitals in 5 countries, adapted to local cultural and organisational contexts. A case study to providing in-depth assessment of the facilitators and barriers in one hospital in the Netherlands has been undertaken (results reported elsewhere). Aim: To support Volunteer Coordinators (VC's) to initiate EOLC-VS's in 5 hospitals across 5 European countries. Methods: VC's attended a 3-day International Training Programme to examine and adapt the ECC implementation and training manuals to their individual organisational and cultural contexts. Due to COVID-19, virtual resources for support were engaged, including international networking sessions between EOLC volunteers and VC's. Structured feedback from VC's were collected at the 3-day training programme and throughout development, training of volunteers, and implementation of EOLC-VC's. Results: The ECC provided VC's with a practical guide to design and implement EOLC-VC's within the complex environment of a hospital. The supportive resources gave VC's an opportunity to share learning, facilitating a deeper understanding of the ECC, as well as enable the sharing of practical experiences during service development and implementation using the ECC. Conclusions: The ECC, with supportive resources, enabled successful implementation of hospital EOLC-VC's volunteer services across 5 countries. Further research to assess the use and experience of these services is now underway as part of the iLIVE Volunteer Study.