Lieutenant shares off-duty time with veterans in hospice

  • Published
  • By Mike Wallace
  • Skywrighter staff
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  First Lt. Austen Lefebvre spends his on-duty time in crew systems engineering in the Air Force Research Laboratory here. 

In his off-duty time, he's volunteered many hours on Saturday afternoons talking with and listening to patients in the hospice at the Dayton Veterans Affairs medical center.

A 2004 Air Force Academy graduate, Lt. Lefebvre said that for a year he was on casual status, meaning that he waiting for a permanent assignment. During that time, he said he wanted to volunteer somewhere and found a hospice in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"I want to enter medical school, and the hospice is a neat place to volunteer," he said. A person learns so much about individual patients. It is very interesting, and a lot of times, it is a happy place."

The Dayton VA hospice program, recognized as a "model for best practices with VA," provides pain management, or palliative treatment, and end-of-life care. Hospice patients are terminally ill, and the hospice staff and volunteers try to maintain a certain quality of life level for them.

"I just like being able to sit down and listen, to try to be a friend," said Lt. Lefebvre who started volunteering at the Dayton facility in June. "A lot of the patients are lonely, and they don't want their families to forget them. I definitely feel that the time I spend is a help to them and that it makes a difference in their lives.

"I think that some people, sometimes the veterans' families, don't or can't always come in. At least that's my perception. The patients like to have people visit them. They like it, too, when there are younger people."

Saying that the patients "have come to terms with where they're at and why," Lt. Lefebvre said that he wasn't sure what to expect in the beginning. But "it's a lot better now than what I originally had thought," he said. Some service organizations, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, sponsor Bingo nights and other activities for hospice patients and their families, he added.

Lt. Lefebvre said that the hospice patients have taught him a lot.

"In Colorado Springs, there was one guy, a retired two-star, who'd been a squadron commander," he said. "He led a raid in support of the D-Day invasion (June 6, 1944), and he gave me a lot of advice professionally and personally.

"There was a lady whose father had been the first anesthesiologist in Colorado Springs, so there was a lot of history in talking with her.

"Here, I've mainly focused on one individual. He hadn't had the chance to live a full life."

Reflecting on the lessons he's learned from the hospice, Lt. Lefebvre said, "I feel like -- as hopefully a future doctor -- I can see the importance of the relationship of a patient and a health care provider, but you have to tread lightly sometimes. Also, I saw how important it is to not ignore the family of a patient.

"The patient certainly can realize the importance of this relationship and actually seeing this and having a part of it is very rewarding"

For his volunteer activities at the Dayton VA hospice, Lt. Lefebvre was nominated for the Wright-Patterson Angel Award recognizing outstanding volunteers. He lives in Beavercreek.