Development and Preliminary Validation of an Emotional Readiness Tool for End-of-Life Care Volunteers

Background: Volunteers play an important role in community-based end-of-life care (EoLC), yet few structured approaches are available to identify prospective volunteers’ emotional support and preparation needs before service engagement. This study developed and preliminarily evaluated an Emotional Readiness Tool (ERT) as a profile-based screening framework. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1372 adults who registered for a community-based EoLC volunteer training programme between 2022 and 2024. The 13-indicator ERT covers emotional regulation capacities, death-related experiences, and interpersonal capacities. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), component-specific internal consistency analysis, correlations with external psychological measures, and exploratory subgroup comparisons were conducted. Results: The sample was predominantly female and highly educated. EFA identified coherent clusters among perceived stress and depressive symptom indicators, whereas death-related and interpersonal indicators did not form common latent factors. Because the ERT combines indicators with different response formats and does not currently provide a validated overall score, cutoff, or suitability classification rule, the factor analysis was interpreted as an exploratory examination of association patterns rather than confirmation of a unified latent structure. Emotional regulation capacities were associated with death anxiety and holistic well-being, while demographic differences were generally small. Conclusions: The ERT is best understood as a multidimensional, profile-based screening framework rather than a conventional psychometric scale. It may support individualized discussion, training, supervision, and role matching, but should not be used as a diagnostic, gatekeeping, or exclusion tool. Further research should evaluate its temporal stability and predictive and criterion-related utility.