Awareness of others' suffering is a key issue within interpersonal helping process. Potential helpers must have recognized the person in need and his/her distress so as to initiate helping behaviors. Suffering is a primary and essential concept in the domain of medical care and especially with terminally ill patients. This study introduces the concept of suffering as a frame of investigation to examine how hospice volunteers witness and perceive the suffering of terminally ill patients. Conceptualizations and methods of Personal Construct Psychology are applied in the present study. All three Christian volunteers in one hospice ward in central Taiwan were contacted and recruited to participate in this study. With the triadic elicitation technique, the interviewees gave responses based on their perceptions of the suffering of terminally ill patients they had served. It was found that motivation based on and in order to fulfill one's faith is essential for the research participants to volunteer for the services in hospice ward. Seven construct domains were identified as; "physical pain", "hardship over loss and separation from family", "total pain-death anxiety and unfinished business", "lack of interpersonal support and interpersonal betrayal", "effects of character", and "unrealistic hope". The interviewed hospice volunteers did not attribute the patients' suffering toward their mis-deeds and sins. However, there is a lack of respect and sharing of the patients' subjectivity, hope and the "co-presence" with the terminally ill patients. It is recommended the above issues should be dealt with in hospice volunteers' in-service trainings.
