Background: In Africa, the core of home-based care (HBC) in the villages is provided by volunteer helpers, individuals chosen to provide both support to patients and important information to health officers. Yet, voluntary work in palliative care and the burden of being a volunteer have not been studied in Africa. Objective: To study the content and burden of volunteer work in the palliative home care of Ilembula District Designated Hospital (IDDH), a secondary care institution in Tanzania. Design: A descriptive prospective study using semistructured and closed questionnaires. Setting/subjects: The modified Palliative Care Evaluation Tool Kit (PCETK) and Professional Quality-of-Life Scale (ProQOL) were used to study the work content and workload of 47 volunteers in the palliative HBC of IDDH. ProQOL was translated to Kiswahili. Fifty-seven health care professionals and students validated the translation. Factorial analysis and Cronbach's alphas were calculated for reliability. Results: Responses to PCETK and ProQOL were received from 34 (72%) to 20 (42%) volunteers, respectively. The Kiswahili translation of ProQSL appeared to be highly reliable. On average, a volunteer worked 20 hours/month and had 22 patients. The main activities included helping with daily tasks, preparing meals, assisting with transport, and reporting the patient's clinical condition to the health care officers. The volunteers reported high satisfaction ratings (average 4.2, standard deviations 0.38) and had higher scores than the validation group in the compassion fatigue scale (2.42 vs. 1.55, p < 0.01) but no burnout. Conclusions: The volunteers had high commitment and workload. Even so, coping strategies for dealing with suffering and death should be better addressed in training.
Keywords: home-based care; palliative care; relationships; volunteer; vulnerability; women.