Hospice Volunteer Spotlight

Help people in your community – Join the Summa Health at Home Team!

As a Summa Health at Home volunteer, you have the opportunity to help patients and families in your own community, who are in need of hospice care. Our volunteers consider it a privilege to be part of someone’s life at this precious and sacred time. The lives of our patients and families are enriched through relationships with dedicated and caring volunteers. 

Pictured in the photo at the left is Elaine Fisher, who has been a Summa Health at Home hospice volunteer for 7 years. She is pictured with hospice patient, Shirley Soloveiko (right).  Elaine visits Shirley weekly providing respite for Shirley’s daughters. Recently, Elaine participated in a Legacy Project helping to compile a book of poems written by Shirley into a Keepsake for her family. Linda Mize, special project volunteer, is a gifted watercolorist who prepared an original painting for the book’s cover.

Elaine shares thoughts about her hospice volunteer work…

“The love of my life is my volunteer work with hospice. People often ask isn’t the work depressing? My response is: It is often sad, sometimes heartbreaking, but not depressing. If I know I’m being helpful, I feel fulfilled rather than depressed…And a respite takes such a load off caregivers, who have a pretty rough job in the best of circumstances. To give them just a few hours when they don’t have to be on high alert is a real gift.”

What our hospice volunteers say about their volunteer service…

• I know I am doing what I feel I am called to do.
• I get to ‘pay forward’ all of the blessings in my life.
• I am able to give back to the Hospice program that served my mother so compassionately and so well.
• To provide some comfort and peace is an honor. To pin a Veteran is an honor.  I love what I do.
• The knowledge that someone may be comforted by a card I created is very rewarding.
• I can bring joy and comfort to the dying and their loved ones. It is evident that it makes a difference to them.
• I receive great joy knowing I may be helping in some way someone who is struggling or someone who has suffered a loss.
• It helps me just as much as I am helping others.
• I am making good use of my time to help serve those, who are misfortunate, to have help at home. This is where God put me.
• I feel that not enough people think outside of themselves and this work has helped me to do that while also helping others.