Hospice care volunteers’ experiences of reflecting on life meaning: a descriptive phenomenological study

Hospice care volunteers are an important part of spiritual care in hospice settings. Through active listening and dialogue, they can help terminally ill patients rediscover and affirm the value of life and the meaning of existence that may have been obscured during illness. However, volunteers often lack structured training in reflective and meaning-oriented aspects of accompaniment, which may limit their ability to respond to patients’ meaning-related needs. Exploring hospice care volunteers’ experiences of reflecting on life meaning is therefore important for improving volunteer training, strengthening spiritual care competence, and enhancing the quality of hospice care services. To explore hospice care volunteers’ experiences of reflecting on life meaning. This descriptive phenomenological study used semi-structured interviews and participant observation from January 2026 to March 2026. The research was conducted with hospice care volunteers at a public hospital in Beijing and two long-term care facilities in Suzhou and Nanning. Data were analyzed with Colaizzi 7-step analysis method. A total of 15 hospice care volunteers were interviewed. Their reflections on life meaning unfolded in three stages. In the initial stage, volunteers witnessed patients’ progressive loss of physical function, which led them to question the foundation of life meaning and experience a sense of emptiness in the face of life’s eventual disappearance. In the deepening stage, they came to realize that life meaning was not an abstract concept, but was embedded in concrete carriers. In the sublimation stage, volunteers shifted from contemplating the meaning of patients’ lives to reflecting on their own lives, began to ask themselves, “How should I live?”, and gradually accepted death with greater equanimity. This study revealed that hospice care volunteers’ experiences of reflecting on life meaning unfolded across three stages. Future research should include volunteers from more diverse regions to improve sample representativeness. The findings may also inform the development of training programs for hospice care volunteers and interventions designed to facilitate life meaning reflection.