Hospital stay less 'scary'

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Hospitals can be scary places, especially for people thrust into big city hospitals who are used to living in small, rural communities or on reserves. And the stress can interfere with the healing and recovery process.

"Aunties in Action" is a one-year pilot project designed to train Aboriginal women as hospital volunteers to help make First Nations patients' time in hospitals more relaxed. It is the first project of its kind in British Columbia.

The program is in its initial stages, with the finishing touches being made to the training manual.

"There's a real big need to have Aboriginal volunteers in the hospital setting," said project founder Deborah Auroux of Vancouver's Children and Women's Health Centre. "As a patient advocate, I always meet families who are just scared. I'm hoping that our aunties will have some comforting words and comfort families just by being there."

The volunteers' role will be to assist patients who have issues with the institutionalization hospitals represent and those apprehensive of the setting and medical terminologies.

The pilot project will run in the Vancouver hospital, as well as in Prince George and Nanaimo. The three hospitals each see several thousand Aboriginal patients a year and are recruiting volunteers to participate in the program.

Auroux said the three-day training of volunteer trainers should occur in Vancouver sometime in September. The trainers will then return to their communities and recruit and train Aboriginal women to be Aunties in Action.

"A project like this would be good in any community," said patient liaison Donna McKenzie of the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. "Hopefully this will ease [the patient] comfort level."

The idea has been a pet project of Auroux's for the six years she has worked at the hospital. "I always saw the need, but I couldn't get it going by myself." Grant money from Involve B.C., a program of the Ministry of Community Development, Cooperatives and Volunteers, made it possible to get the initiative off the ground.

Those involved hope the hospitals will see the advantage of the program during the pilot project and choose to fund it themselves.

"The big thing for Aunties in Action is not to create a new volunteer services program. It's just to enhance the current ones that exist in the hospitals," said Auroux. "We don't want to reinvent the wheel."

Volunteers will be expected to do things like sit with a patient while they go through dialysis or visit patients in extended care. They will talk with the patient, or maybe read or play cards, whatever that patient is comfortable with.

Women offering to volunteer must be Aboriginal, over the age of 18 and demonstrate a good level of maturity. The response of women interested in volunteering has been very favorable to date.

Women wishing to be involved can contact Deborah Auroux at (604) 875-3440.