Volunteers add extra touch in outpatient surgery
Select them carefully, stress patient confidentiality
Candy stripers and pink ladies have been delivering flowers and mail to hospital patients for as long as anyone can remember, but today's volunteers are moving into other areas of the hospital where they can help outpatient surgery staff with many tasks.
DeKalb Medical Center in Decatur, GA, has five volunteers who work in the outpatient surgery admissions department and the post anesthesia care unit, says Linda Dacey-Caban, volunteer coordinator. "They do not provide one-on-one patient care, but they help check in patients, transport patients, file, and run errands throughout the hospital for the staff," she says. "Volunteers in the area find it to be an exciting place to work because it is so busy and they are really needed."
Outpatient surgery managers who do use or who want to use volunteers in their program should think carefully about their screening, selection, and training process, points out Margaret Spear, MD, a surveyor for the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC). While accreditation standards don't specifically address volunteers, it is important to note that surveyors will expect volunteers to receive the same training on issues such as patient confidentiality as employees receive, she says. "In fact, teaching volunteers about the importance of patient confidentiality is probably more critical because they are volunteering in a facility in which their neighbors or friends might be visiting for care that they want kept private."
"Our volunteers receive the same information on patient confidentiality that our employees receive but we spend more time on it than we do with employees," says Dacey-Caban. Although volunteers, even those who help with filing, don't have the same access to patient information that employees will have, just knowing that a church member or neighbor is at the hospital for surgery is information that they should not share with others, she explains.
"We also teach them how to act when the patient is someone they know," says Dacey-Caban. Being greeted by a neighbor who is volunteering can be disconcerting to the patient, and sometimes, to the volunteer as well, she says. "We teach them to be congenial but not to ask questions about the patient's reason for being at the hospital for surgery and not to repeat that they've even seen the patient."
No surgery program would hire an employee without a criminal background check, references, and interview process, and you should include all of these activities when selecting volunteers, says Spear. While a volunteer may not need as extensive a file as an employee, every surgery program manager should have some form of documentation that shows that the volunteer did go through a selection process and did receive the training and orientation needed to perform their responsibilities.
"It is also important that your volunteers be clearly identified with a name badge that describes them by name and volunteer," Spear points out. "This will be something that an accreditation surveyor will expect to see," she adds.
At DeKalb Medical Center, "We do follow the same process to select people who apply for volunteer positions as we follow for employees," says Dacey-Caban. "One difference is that we require the potential volunteer's doctor to sign a form that states the person is capable both physically and mentally to perform volunteer duties within the hospital." This is necessary because, unlike employees, volunteers do not undergo employment health screenings or physicals, she points out. This physician approval is required for all volunteers regardless of age or area in which they want to work, she adds.
Once the interview process is complete, Dacey-Caban assigns the volunteer to an area based on requests from different departments, her assessment of the volunteer's ability to work in different areas, and the volunteer's requests. Volunteers are given job descriptions that clearly describe their duties and how they will be evaluated, she explains. Even with the job descriptions, some volunteers find that they are not comfortable working in the surgery area, Dacey-Caban adds. The most successful outpatient surgery volunteers are very outgoing, energetic, and comfortable with a fast-paced business day, she says.
While Dacey-Caban doesn't have trouble attracting volunteers at a hospital-based program, some freestanding surgery programs do have more challenges. One man did volunteer for a brief time, says Marie Shattuck, RN, manager of pre-op and recovery at Northwoods Surgery Center in Cumming, GA. "He was an older man, and he wanted to volunteer to socialize with other people his age as well as stay busy," she says. "We don't have other volunteers, and we don't have a cafeteria where a variety of people gather, so we could not offer him what he wanted." While she sees the value of volunteers as an adjunct to her staff, Shattuck admits that it will be hard for her freestanding center to find them.
In addition to providing extra help for your staff, remember that volunteers often are the face and voice of your surgery program, Spears says. "Don't recruit a volunteer as an extra pair of hands unless they project the image and attitude that you want all of your employees to project," she says. "Patients and visitors don't know the difference between employees and volunteers, they look upon everyone they meet as a representative of the outpatient surgery program."
Sources
For more information about volunteers in an outpatient surgery program, contact:
- Linda Dacey-Caban, Volunteer Coordinator, DeKalb Medical Center, 2701 N. Decatur Road, Decatur, GA 30033. Telephone: (404) 501-5079. E-mail: [email protected].
- Marie Shattuck, RN, Manager, Pre-Op and Recovery, Northwoods Surgery Center, 1230 Bald Ridge Marina Road, Cumming, GA 30041. Telephone: (770) 888-7105.
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