Patient interaction is a reason many enter the field of nursing, but in today’s health care environment nurses have to juggle multiple tasks and interacting with patients unfortunately loses its importance. When Judy Brown, Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services at Howard County General Hospital, established the Volunteer Nurse Program in 2002 she was relying on those very nurses who enjoyed spending time with patients.

Brown works with a volunteer staff of 11 nurses, retired nurses who miss that patient bond. About 50 percent of the volunteers used to work at Howard County General prior to their retirement and the other 50 percent worked elsewhere but live in the community.

Two volunteers are on site each day, working a four-hour shift and making rounds between the medical and surgical units to find out what needs to be done and how they can help. On their typical day the volunteers go to the nursing office to pick up a patient roster so they know the names and room numbers of admitted patients, then they go to the nursing units and talk to the charge nurse or clinical manager to see which patients are in particular need that day. “The patient may want some information, a newspaper or may be distraught and just want someone to be a friend,” said Brown.

Since they are retired nurses they know the routine and are able to be of assistance without interfering. They help out the staff with supply and equipment issues freeing up more time of the hospital nurses. Together the volunteer nurses work the equivalent of approximately one full-time nurse. The hospital nursing staff is appreciative of the volunteer nurses and the time they spend with the patients. Brown said, “the program enhances patient satisfaction and supplements the care given by the hospital’s regular nursing staff.”

“The patients never have enough attention and sometimes if we have a nurse with specific skills we assign them to certain patients,” said Brown who believes the program “makes the families and the patients more comfortable.”

One of the volunteers of the program, Irene Abeel a former Howard County General nurse, said that she signed on to the program because she, “wanted to give something back.” But now she feels like she’s getting so much more than she’s giving.

The Volunteer Nurse Program was recently awarded the Volunteer Hero Top Winner at The Daily Record’s Health Care Heroes Awards Ceremony in March. Brown said about the program, “It’s been nice for everyone all around. It keeps the volunteers connected to the field, the community and their colleagues.”

Contact:
Judy Brown, MAS, R.N., CNAA, BC, CHE
Senior Vice President, Patient Care Services
Howard County General Hospital
410-740-7760

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Reprinted with the permission of  The Daily Record.
Originally published March 27, 2006, By Karen Buckelew.

The Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare (BACH), a nonprofit work force development consortium that includes seven local hospitals (The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Maryland General Hospital, Mercy Medical Center, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, St. Agnes Hospital, Union Memorial Hospital, and University of Maryland Medical Center), has chosen an institution with which to partner in its effort to train unemployed workers for health industry jobs.

The alliance is partnering with the Maryland Center for Arts and Technology, a North Howard Street training center already geared toward serving Baltimore’s unemployed or underemployed, to launch a 12-week bridge program which began April 10, 2006.

The bridge program is intended to enhance the basic skills of workers with low level reading and math abilities, helping them bridge the gap to new careers. In turn, the hospitals hopefully will get more skilled workers for their hard-to-fill positions.

The training program is currently serving 10 students in its pilot run. "This is a prototype," said Ron Hearn, Executive Director of BACH, "to take a look at best practices, develop a model and see if it works. And, if it doesn't work, to make adjustments to it as necessary."

The training program is costing the alliance more than $300,000, according to officials, but another $250,000 is needed to provide students with necessities like child care and transportation.

The alliance has been funded about $950,000 in grant money to support projects including the Pre-Allied Health Bridge Program at the Maryland Center for Arts and Technology as well as career counseling programs at five local hospitals.

The hospitals split 50-50 with the alliance the cost of the career counselors, intended to steer their existing entry-level workers into health industry positions with high vacancy rates.

The alliance focuses on seven positions in which the hospitals have reported the most openings: certified nursing assistants, radiology technicians, surgery technicians, medical laboratory technicians, pharmacy technicians, nurse extenders and respiratory therapists.

Classes at the Maryland Center for Arts and Technology are just the first step in the alliance's plan, Hearn said. The group envisions "a pipeline" to bring underemployed workers into higher-paying jobs.

It would like to expand the program to serve more students with basic skills training, as well as, in the future, provide them with the more advanced training required to enter into the seven targeted jobs.

Many area hospitals already try to support that type of training, Hearn said, by subsidizing advance course work for existing employees or even providing them with paid time off work to take classes, as is the case at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System.

Students in the bridge program, reading at a minimum of an eighth-grade level, and with math skills at a minimum sixth-grade level, will hone those skills in a health industry context, learning health care-related words in literacy courses and solving health-related problems in math class.

The goal is to raise each student's skills by two levels by the end of the program, which in future incarnations may last as long as 15 weeks.

"Essentially the purpose of the bridge program is to increase academic skills via unique teaching methods," Hearn said. "The purpose is to increase their academic skills, and they’re taught in a contextualized fashion for the health care industry."

Contact:
Ron Hearn
Executive Director
Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare
443-451-9822

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