Care givers add hours of community serviceby Heather WoolwinePublic Relations The health care professions exist to serve the physical, mental, and emotional needs of the general population and contribute to the betterment of society just by virtue of their definition. So when many people devote a career to caring for others, especially in a department like MUSC’s Family Medicine, how did administrators convince those care givers to give even more, and devote coveted time to volunteering for the community? Easy, they just asked. “We wanted to continue to increase MUSC’s visibility in the community outside the normal bounds of the department,” said Bill Simpson, M.D., Family Medicine professor and volunteer program coordinator. “Sure we do a lot of patient care, but we’re paid for that. We wanted a chance to do something totally for the community.” Since the idea’s successful hatching in July 2003, department members completed 750 hours of community service, just shy of the rather ambitious 1,000 hour first year goal. Still, 750 hours remains quite an achievement by many standards for a fledgling volunteer program. “We had approximately half of our medical staff involved this first year,” Simpson said. “They were asked to document their volunteer hours on monthly leave summary sheets. We believe that the hours were actually under-reported though, simply because people forgot to document their time.” Volunteers participated in numerous activities and a wide variety of organizations including the Charleston Interfaith Crisis Ministries for the homeless, the Jenkins Center for Child Development (an area orphanage), the Franke Home, the Hollings Cancer Center Mobile Health Unit, Habitat for Humanity, a Charleston County Schools tutoring program and the College of Charleston. “Volunteering in places like the Crisis Ministries shelter for the homeless and the Jenkins Center was a wonderful opportunity for a number of reasons. We as health care professionals were able to care for populations that we otherwise wouldn’t see in our office,” Simpson said. “Even working with the College of Charleston sports teams enabled our physicians to see sports injuries they don’t encounter very often. Volunteering makes you feel good and it helps people, but it’s also a great opportunity to broaden educational opportunities.” With the second year of the program under way as of July 1, Simpson and his colleagues continued to set ambitious goals for volunteer hours, this year hoping to involve more staff and reach 2000 hours of time with the community, or the equivalent of a full-time staff member providing nothing but community service. “We’re going to keep putting the opportunities out there in the department as quickly as possible, with the hopes that many different kinds of activities and time slots will encourage more people to join the program and keep those already involved,” Simpson said. Friday, Aug. 13, 2004
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