"To the volunteer who lends his financial aid and his time in the health field, each patient is presented as a showcase where no aspect of his life and no detail is left out of his sight, so that professional ethics and deontology preserve these patients so that what they reveal of their privacy is not divulged". This is the reflection of Maite Díaz, professor at the School of Nursing of the University of Navarra, who participated along with volunteers in a workshop dedicated to hospitalized patients.

The talk entitled "Professional secrecy and attention with sick people" was part of the awareness campaign organized by Universitarios por la financial aid Social (UAS), which brings together more than 200 students from the University of Navarra, on the occasion of the International Year of Volunteers.

The professor thus defended the right to privacy of patients and alluded to the responsibility of professionals to maintain professional secrecy. "The right to privacy and the duty of all professionals to keep it, known as 'professional secrecy', must be unquestionably respected".

For Maite Díaz, "being a volunteer lends itself to patients letting off steam. It is important to know what we should listen to and what we should not allow ourselves to listen to. We must know how to divert aspects of the patient that do not interest us, avoid false curiosities and not to manipulate what we know by discussing it with others because we can trivialize their dignity".

Characteristics of a good volunteer

The University of Navarra professor believes that being a volunteer "means being willing to give. It is an attitude that needs to be professionalized: the more you give, the better you give. What you give comes back to you like a boomerang, because by being a volunteer you receive more than you give: that is the award of what is priceless".

Maite Díaz cited other attitudes that should characterize a volunteer, including availability, closeness, optimism and observation skills, since "you have to know how to look at people to know what is happening to them and what they need".

He also pointed out that "a volunteer does not replace the family" and recalled that "we must avoid the danger of becoming emotionally involved. An emotional involvement diminishes the effective financial aid . It is necessary to know how to see the problems from a distance, to distance oneself from them, to look at them with serenity and objectivity".

The professor commented that "people who are suffering wonder about the meaning of things they didn't wonder about when they were healthy. It will often be the volunteers who give meaning to something that seems to have no meaning. The meaning of life conceived as a direction should always point to eternal life, even if there are stops along the way and 'bits of meaning' can be found in the different events of life".