On April 23rd, Sant Jordi’s Day, the volunteer programme was started at ICO in Badalona. This iniciative started when some of the female volunteers gave roses to the patients.
At the moment there are two volunteers who come from the centre in Hospitalet. It is foreseen, though, that the team will be bigger in the future. These volunteers will work at the Day-Hospital of Onco-haematology, and their task will be orientated, above all, to paying company to the patients and to offering them emotional support: company, encouragement, dinamization, practical support, substituting the main carer at specific moments, lending books and magazines... The aim of these activities is to help avoiding the isolation of the ill ones within the institution and contribute to the improvement of integral assistance of the patients.
As Mercè Riquelme, social worker at the centre in Badalona and one of the people responsible for the project, sees it, "we respond to the interest of the professionals to develop a volunteer programme which complements the assistence tasks of the professionals and contributes with a plus of human touch".
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