After 20+ years as a professional photographer, Pat Carver returned to school and earned a Master’s Degree in Social Gerontology.  She had been intrigued by the challenges and beauty of aging while volunteering her photography skills for a non-profit adult day health center in Chico, CA.  (As a side note, after moving away from Chico for 11 years, she and her husband returned to Chico and Pat now serves on the board of that inspiring center - Peg Taylor Center for Adult Day Health Care.)

With her new degree came an opportunity to work in a retirement community as part of the Director’s Leadership Team.  During this time, the non-profit community became determined to establish their own hospice.  Pat was part of the hospice development team... reading regulations, editing policy and becoming familiar from the inside out with the volunteer management and training process.  A new hospice was founded and in Pat’s mind, an idea began to emerge for consistent, flexible and more economical ways to recruit and train volunteers. 

Combining a unique knowledge base, Pat set out on her own and began a labor of love... writing a volunteer training manual based upon Medicare requirements in a conversational manner that she would later record and produce in a movie DVD format.  Incorporating her own photography with informational key points, she has created an independent study program that covers with sensitivity, information volunteers need to understand before beginning their hospice journey.  Through the use of new, innovative technology, she has developed a program that takes hospice volunteer training into the 21st century.  Not a fast paced thriller, Pat’s slight Southern drawl and photographs from around the world, help make subjects such as ‘Death and Dying’, ‘Infection Control’ and ‘Grief and Loss’ approachable and understandable.  She has taken difficult subject matter, broken it down and made it simple enough for adults of any educational or occupational background to grasp, while maintaing the integrity of the information.  The topics are covered individually and thoroughly, providing good introductory core information. 

As the photo above implies, Pat is always open to new ideas and new approaches for tackling the challenges of business and life.  Not content with just her core training materials, she has added a student Workbook to the training program.  In addition, she has had the complete Manual translated into Spanish.  Watch for future in-service topics to come in the years ahead as she continually strives to meet the needs of hospices in providing training for their volunteers. 

Universities and colleges around the world have begun to offer new paths of learning for today’s adults.  New technology and self-study are the core of these paths.  We believe future hospice volunteers will come to expect flexibility in their training and hope that this new Series will meet that need, benefiting both the hospice and the volunteer.