HANCEVILLE, Ala. – The Governor’s Office of Volunteer Services (GOVS) recently put out a call for volunteers among retired medical professionals and medical students to put their names in a database of available reserve personnel to support the current active medical workforce as needed. The press release reads:
GOVS seeks health care professional volunteers to serve during the COVID-19 outbreak
The Governor’s Office of Volunteer Services (GOVS), through its partnership with the Alabama Department of Public Healthy [sic.] (ADPH), announces its newly launched Alabama ReadyOp program.
This program will collect volunteers and potential reserve staff information and send out alerts in the event that the help of qualified retired health professionals, medical students and related professionals is needed to support efforts related to COVID-19.
Alabama ReadyOP is a communication tool developed to operate with the goal of sending alerts and sharing public-health-related information quickly and efficiently. As a contact within the ReadyOp system, volunteers will receive alerts directly from the GOVS.
Alabama ReadyOP is currently seeking recently retired, part-time health professionals and medical students, related professionals and lay people to sign up. The program is also seeking health-care providers whose offices are closed due to COVID-19 and can offer assistance at this time.
GOVS will distribute alerts submitted by ADPH to volunteers based on the severity level through several communications channels. Volunteers can sign up to receive the alerts by visiting www.servealabama.gov/alabamareadyop.
Background:
The Governor’s Office of Volunteer Services works to increase an ethic of service and volunteerism in the State of Alabama, strengthen the capacity of Alabama’s faith and community-based organizations, and promote collaboration among individuals and organizations striving to meet some of the greatest needs in our state. For more information, visit www.servealabama.gov.
Wallace State nursing students already on the case
While the state is seeking medical students to help out, nursing students at Wallace State Community College (WSCC) are ahead of the game, having already responded to requests from hospitals and long-term care facilities. Ascension Healthcare (operating in north Alabama as the St. Vincent’s system) and others, especially those to which the school routinely sends students for their clinical rotations, currently employ a number of WSCC students in patient care positions, easing routine workloads on regular nursing staffs and allowing facilities and systems to focus more energy on combating the virus.
WSCC Director of Nursing Deborah “Pepper” Hoover told The Tribune, “The Board of Nursing has already approved for nursing students to work at facilities, so a number of our students are already being employed by facilities as a patient assistant, as unlicensed personnel, to work within the scope of what is needed in the emergency situation.”
WSCC has approximately 550 nursing students, whose spring courses are ongoing through online means. Hoover said that her department has encouraged those students to “help as much as they can, within the limits of not endangering their education, as far as their fulfillment of the objectives of the nursing curriculum.
“We have approximately 87 students that are graduating in May, and they’ll be graduating on time, hopefully. And after the third semester, all of our nursing students are awarded a practical nursing certificate, so those students are available to work on a temporary license as a practical nurse or take LPN boards if they want to.
“The Alabama Board of Nursing has allowed them to work with an expanded delegation potential in this emergency situation, so we have posted a note to our students regarding the facilities that have specifically requested that students contact them. We have a number of long-term care facilities that have volunteered to pay for the temporary licenses for our students that have finished the third semester, who are actually eligible to work as Licensed Practical Nurses once they take boards or they can get a temporary license to work as a Practical Nurse. So that is almost 200 students, so several of those students have already done that.
“And then, again, we’re anticipating graduating within the next month- I think May 8- we hope to graduate 85, and hope to be able to complete the summer semester with over a hundred students- hopefully 130 or 140 graduates that will join the workforce, as well.
“So we feel like we are contributing a lot. Some of our students are working long hours to facilitate the staffing in these local hospitals. And a lot of the local facilities- long-term care and acute care- have reached out to us to try to gather our students who might be interested in working with them. We have 550 students or so in the program right now, so that’s a sizable number of students that can help, as needed.”
With all coursework online for now, according to Hoover, the program is working with students to help them get to work while maintaining reasonable academic and family schedules.
Hoover concluded, “This is an unprecedented time for all. We’re certainly trying to do our part to assist in the health care workforce. And we do not have a crystal ball, so we do not know exactly what the future’s going to hold, but we hope that we can all work together in this time of crisis to facilitate a positive outcome.”
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