Building Your Volunteer Program: Lessons Learned from the Fairfax Medical Reserve Corps

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Building Your Volunteer Program Lessons Learned
from the Fairfax Medical Reserve Corps

• Donna M. Foster, MRC Coordinator
• Jesse R. Habourn, MRC Database Manager

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Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) in Fairfax County, VA

• Primary function operate mass dispensing sites
• Current membership 3,100 Medical non-medical
  volunteers
• 29 medical
• 71 non-medical
• Secondary functions
• Community Health Partners subset of MRC
  volunteers distribute health promotion/disease
  prevention information to public
• Interested in other volunteer opportunities?

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Fairfax MRC Planning

• All hazards approach using smallpox as framework
• Worst case scenario
• Multiple outbreaks
• Mass vaccination of all 1.2 million Fairfax
  County residents within three to five days
• Permits scaling down for alternative strategies
  or targeted events

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Fundamentals of Fairfax MRC Response Plan

• Dispensing sites located at 24 high schools and
  George Mason University
• Requires 54 teams of app. 234 volunteers each
• Team will work 12 hour shifts for 3-5 days

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Fundamentals of Fairfax MRC Response Plan contd

• Residents arrive at dispensing site via bus
  pick-up from
• Elementary and middle schools
• High school bus stops
• 4 satellite locations
• Residents with handicap parking stickers may
  drive to site if necessary
• Media to alert residents about the plan

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Fairfax MRC Organization

• Incident Command System (ICS)
• Clear chain of command
• Easily plug in new volunteers/staff
• National standard
• Joint partnership MRC volunteer team, school
  system staff, Fairfax PD
• Incident Coordinator of each share Unified
  Command

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Mass Dispensing Site Staffing

• One MRC Team
• 1 Incident Coordinator 104 Site Assistant
  (min.)
• 1 Safety Officer 2 Medical Directors
• 1 Public Info. Officer (Media School) 2
  NP/PA
• 4 Administrative Asst. 41 Registered Nurse
• 1 Volunteer Coordinator 4 Reg. Nurse Unit
  Leader
• 1 Support Branch Director 6 Physician
• 1 Sup. Branch Deputy Dir. 2 Pharmacist
• 10 Interpreters (min.) 2 Pharmacy Technician
• 1 ASL Interpreter 6 Public Health Staff
• 1 Data Entry Unit Leader 6 Mental Health
  Professional
• 24 Data Entry Specialists 6 Greeter
  (Counselor)
• 1 Flow Control Unit Leader 6 Special Needs
  Asst.
• Total 234 (min.)

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Critical Success Factors

• Realization regarding the magnitude of the
  problem (Anthrax 2001, 2005 scare)
• Executive sponsorship CAO and Health
  Officer/Director of jurisdiction support at
  outset is crucial eventual endorsement from
  elected officials
• Buy-in from key stakeholders in emergency
  response (police, fire, schools, transportation,
  medical community)

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Lessons LearnedThe Dos

• Develop partnerships with community organizations
• Factor diverse and special needs populations into
  your plan be ethnically, linguistically
  sensitive
• Dedicate staff resources necessary to develop
  emergency plan and program infrastructure

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Lessons LearnedThe Dos contd

• Tag onto existing contracts for reverse 911,
  text/voice alerting systems, etc. to develop your
  volunteer database (eliminates RFP bidding
  process)
• Utilize NIMS as an organizational concept for
  response plan
• Use physicians in medical roles, not as Incident
  Coordinators or other leadership positions
• Consider using mobile teams for senior and
  developmentally disabled populations

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Lessons LearnedThe Dos contd

• Develop Job Action Sheets (JAS) list of duties
  volunteer can expect to perform
• Be as detailed as possible describe every
  single duty
• Create a JAS for each volunteer position in each
  unit (Nurse will have different duties in Unit A
  than in Unit B)
• This is the core of training!
• Always explain that program is evolving and that
  changes may be made
• Practice your plan adjust as necessary

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Lessons LearnedThe Donts

• Dont start recruiting until plan is in place
• Dont start recruiting until system to manage
  volunteer information and communication is in
  place
• Dont let too much time pass between initial
  volunteer sign-up and first communication
• Dont promise what you cant deliver

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Fairfax MRC Alert Network

• www.fairfaxmrc.org
• Comprehensive online system manages volunteer
  contact info., communication, participation and
  program analysis
• Scaleable, fully customizable to adapt to
  changing program
• Created by Roam Secure, Inc.

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Alerting Volunteers with MRCAN

• Text alerts to
• E-mail
• Cell phones w/ text messaging
• Alpha-numeric pagers
• PDAs
• Initiate remote alerts from cells or pagers
• Include attachments

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MRCAN Features

• Grouping
• Reporting
• Track
• Volunteer contact info
• Trainings completed
• Replies to alerts
• Bounced messages or invalid devices
• System usage

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Planned Improvements to MRCAN

• Increased alerting functionality
• HTML-based messages
• Automated notifications (application approval,
  training reminders, etc.)
• Integrate interactive voice response to reply to
  alerts
• Virtual tour of dispensing site
• Generate team rosters and volunteer staffing
  plans on the fly
• GIS compatibility GIS alerting

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Planned Improvements to MRCAN

• Automate training sign-up process
• Logical, exclusion-based application process
• Library of information on biological agents,
  emergency preparedness, etc.
• Volunteer photo ID creation/management
• Online training capability

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Advice on Alert Networks

• Encourage volunteers to manage own account
• Limit e-mail alerts to important announcements
  only. Limit cell/pager alerts to emergencies and
  annual tests only
• Provide wealth of tech. support material
• Have plan to deal with spam blockers and
  volunteers without e-mail accounts/cells, etc.
• Make website a place volunteers want to visit
  instead of a place theyre required to visit
• Install a backup server

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Recruitment Strategies

• Use volunteers to recruit others
• Get your local politicians involved
• Capitalize on current events re issue news
  releases (e.g. recent anthrax scare)
• Target non-essential public workers

• Direct mail to
• Pharmacists
• Nurses
• Physicians
• Recently retired first responders, military
  personnel and jurisdiction employees
• Physicians recruit physicians phone calls seem
  to work best

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Training Provided

• All members receive
• General orientation
• Role-specific training
• Participate in annual exercise
• Leaders additionally receive
• Leadership/Incident Command
• Hands on Practice
• Leadership Meeting at Assigned Site
• Over 1/3 of volunteers have participated in
  training as of early April 2005
• E-newsletter Fairfax MRC News

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Thank you!