/hs/pre/med/docs/Volunteers_Needed/

The Joan Nicole Prince Home is a 2-bedroom comfort care home for terminally ill residents who are unable to remain in their own home.  Volunteers serve as surrogate family members and provide direct hands-on bedside resident care.  We currently have over a dozen students volunteering at the Joan Nicole Prince Home, but most will leave the area for the summer leaving the home in need of caregivers.  Students volunteering at the home come from various institutions such as Union College, Ellis School of Nursing, Albany Medical College, Albany College of Pharmacy, SUNY Albany etc…, so it is a wonderful place to learn interprofessional education (IPE).

Our students have learned tremendous lessons about patient-centered care from their work at the home, and I would love to see more students experience the valuable lessons to be learned by caring for people at such a vulnerable time in their lives.  During the summer, the home likes to train students that we know can volunteer for at least 4-8 hrs/week.  The home must have coverage from 7:00 am until 11 pm at night, so there is a lot of flexibility in shift coverage for students who will be working full time in other jobs.  Students should contact the home directly at www.joannicoleprincehome.org

Ideally students could train over their winter break so that they could volunteer at the home over the summer.

There are 22 of these comfort care homes in New York:  http://www.compassionandsupport.org/index.php/for_patients_families/hospice/homes_for_the_dying