Research Report
The Experience of Volunteers Participating in a Salon for Cancer Patients and Their Family
2012 Volume 26 Issue 1 Pages 32-40
Details
2012 Volume 26 Issue 1 Pages 32-40
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the experiences of volunteers in a “cancer salon” where cancer patients and their families can talk to each other; these volunteers were cancer patients or their families. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 8 volunteers and were qualitatively analyzed.
The results showed that the experiences of the volunteers could be divided into 6 main categories: “desire to alleviate the mental pain of people with cancer,” “realization of the importance of the salon,” “increased self-respect,” “difficulties in attending to visitors,” “reliance on other volunteer members,” and “spiritual healing.”
Because the volunteers cherished the desire to alleviate the mental pain of people with cancer, they wanted to help those visiting the salon by making use of their experiences with cancer. Thus, the volunteers realized the importance of the salon in providing emotional support for the cancer patients and their families as these visitors could talk to each other and strike a chord with one another. Furthermore, the volunteers wanted to help as much as possible and realized that they could actually help the visitors; therefore, the salon was the place where they achieved increased self-respect.
Nevertheless, they experienced difficulties in attending to visitors, because they could not give the visitors useful advice or they experienced compassion for the visitors. However, these difficulties were solved by reliance on other volunteer members.
The experiences that the volunteers obtained at the cancer salon aided them in learning about other people’s way of life, becoming emotionally stable, and making practical use of their experiences. This led to spiritual healing, i.e., they could acquire a new sense of control as cancer survivors.
At such salons, it is important to provide nursing service that involves nurses who understand the conflicts and needs of volunteers and help them in supporting the patients and their families.
