Volunteers keeping in touch with nursing home residents

Hilde Tompkins asks volunteers to imagine what it would feel like to live in a single room without any visitors.

"Same room, day in and day out," she says. "Four walls and a TV. You can get pretty tired of looking at four walls and a TV."

That's why she spends time at the Kaaterskill Nursing Home in Catskill as a visitor and coordinates the visiting program at St. John the Baptist Church in Greenville. The parish alternates with volunteers from St. Theresa's Church in Windham.

Need for visitors

Many of the residents of the Kaaterskill Nursing Home have no place else to go, Ms. Tompkins said. They may not have family at home or living nearby to take care of them.

Although crafts, entertainment and other things are provided by the nursing home, visitors are sometimes scarce.

While residents have attentive nurses and aides, the staff also has other responsibilities and cannot provide the one-on-one time a dedicated visitor can, she explained.

Taking turns

The two parishes developed a system to make sure that everyone in the nursing home gets a visit, said Ms. Tompkins. Volunteers pick up an I.D. and clipboard at the front desk to take with them to chronicle the residents they've visited.

Volunteers who come later pick up where previous volunteers left off. By the end of each week, she noted, everybody gets a visit.

"A lot of [the residents] are wheelchair-bound," Ms. Tompkins said. "They go outside to get some fresh air and to their meals, and they all have TVs, but most of them will sit there and sleep. Picture yourself being in one of these places; we may all end up there one day. It'd be nice to have someone say, 'Hi, how are you?' and sit down and visit."

Listening

According to Ms. Tompkins, many of the residents welcome the chance to talk about their lives, families, interests and memories.

"You let them talk," she explained. "They tell you about their life. It's that one-on-one contact that they don't have that we try to fill."

Visitors can prompt conversations by asking about photographs or other things the residents have. She also encourages volunteers to bring such items as puzzles and word games, which can be an affirmation that "your mind never gets old. It stays active, and it wants to do so many things."

Communion

On the first Thursday of the month, Rev. James Schiffer, pastor of St. John's and St. Teresa's, celebrates Mass at the nursing home.

Parishioners conduct communion services on the other Thursdays. Neil McHugh, a longtime Eucharistic minister at St. John's, presides over the service on the third week of the month.

"The Spirit carries you along," he said of the experience. "I found a lot of satisfaction and joy in bringing communion to the homebound."

He jokes to his wife that, since he's 76, volunteering is helping him in another way: "When it comes my turn down there, I'll know my way around."

(Fourteen people from St. John the Baptist have been visiting Kaaterskill for a year. After a recent membership drive, 16 more joined. Many of them are senior citizens themselves. St. John's takes care of the first and third weeks of the month; on the second and fourth, members from St. Theresa's Church in Windham take up the banner.)

(6/21/07)