Today's technology offers new methods of teaching where students can participate in the learning process from their home computer. This method of teaching is referred to as "e-Learning" or "distance learning" and it utilizes new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning.

The Internet gives individuals easy access to a host of educational resources and opportunities. e-Learning technology and the Internet empower learners by allowing them to learn at their own pace, in a location and on a schedule that best meets their needs. Online training programs such as these are becoming the norm for educational institutions as well as businesses that need to train employees. The flexibility associated with these new learning methods will allow more individuals to participate in the hospice volunteer community.

The HEAL Project has established an e-Learning portal for hospice volunteers through the HVTI. This portal gives prospective and current volunteers an opportunity to learn the basic and advanced skills necessary to serve the dying in a most loving and compassionate way. The issues the dying are dealing with at the end of their lives cover the spectrum of life experience. As a result, caring for the dying requires an ability to listen empathically and act with altruistic kindness.

A hospice volunteer training program cannot teach a volunteer to have an answer to every question or an action for every situation they will encounter. However, an effective training program can teach hospice volunteers to do what is innate to their being -- to give loving compassionate care in a way that serves both the volunteer and the dying person.

Being a hospice volunteer can be a life-changing and life-fulfilling experience. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's National Survey of Hospice Volunteers and Staff found that:

An estimated 500,000 people volunteer in the nation's 3,200 hospice organizations annually, providing more than ten million hours of service each year. In our experience, many hospice volunteers rapidly find their work very satisfying and choose to make a long term commitment to serving the dying. Along with that commitment to serve comes a desire to learn more so that they may better serve those they care for at the bedside. Unfortunately, a comprehensive continuing education program is not readily available to most hospice volunteers. The fiscal pressures placed upon hospice organizations forces them to consider the multi-disciplinary care needed to support the dying person first. Programs for volunteers must come second. The ability to develop and maintain continuing education programs for volunteers is a challenging proposition. Such programs for volunteers are becoming increasingly more difficult to support as profit margins are declining.

It is the goal of the HEAL Project to make HVTI a vehicle for change that will allow our society to harvest and retain more compassionate caregivers from our communities. Through academic and experiential contributions from the hospice community at large, we hope to develop a broad curriculum of courses that will raise hospice volunteer education to new heights.