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Developing: Preparing Volunteers for the MRC

Once you have determined that a particular individual would make a great addition to your Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), it will be necessary to look carefully at that person’s current capabilities. Each volunteer comes to the MRC with a pre-existing skill set. These skills may need to be augmented with specialized training as determined by your local emergency response and public health needs. Training refers to closing the gap between a volunteer’s existing capabilities and those required for effective utilization as an MRC volunteer.

To protect everyone involved, volunteers will be permitted or qualified to perform only certain types of activities. The criteria determining which activities people can and cannot perform will differ among communities. It might depend on having a combination of the following:

• Required state licensure or licensure-equivalency¹ (for license-regulated skills)
• Proof of training in non-license-regulated skills (those that have some bearing on the MRC unit’s task)
• Additional training relevant to emergency response and/or public health activities (such as CPR, identification of hazardous materials, features of your local incident command system, etc.)

An MRC volunteer’s qualifications will be determined by your unit’s mission, local laws and professional standards, and the requirements of your response partners.

Ideally, each MRC unit will maintain a regularly updated inventory of its volunteers’ skills and qualifications. During an emergency or other public health situation, local emergency managers or public health officials with access to your database can determine where to deploy your MRC volunteers. You also can use this information during non-emergency times—for influenza clinics, education outreach, or epidemiological surveys—to help assemble teams based on complementary differences in skills, training, availability, and interests.² 

Under the National Incident Management System (NIMS), team structures are being developed to meet certain capabilities that are likely to be needed in a national-level emergency. Keep in touch with your local response partners about their plans to form and utilize medical professional teams and the corresponding support staff.

Training volunteers refers to upgrading a volunteer’s skills profile to meet the minimum requirements or qualifications necessary for particular types of utilization. These qualifications will represent the volunteer’s baseline of skills that can be utilized during an emergency or other public health incident.

MRC volunteers can serve in many different roles; these roles can be grouped into two broad categories, which include:

1. Front-line/direct-service
2. Support/administrative

Front-line/direct-service volunteers comprise a highly diverse group, although they are generally individuals working on the immediate scene of an emergency or public health situation and offering direct service that requires some skill level and involves some risk level. Support/administrative volunteers perform essential duties and primarily operate in the background, although some of their functions also may require particular skills that may necessitate additional training.

These categories of volunteers are each associated with specific training requirements. Regardless of type, all volunteers will need to undergo some form of orientation to the MRC. They will need an overview of the system in which the MRC’s activities occur, whether in relation to emergency response or public health, or both. Everyone needs to understand how his or her role fits into the larger picture.

¹ Some volunteers may be retired from their original profession and may not have maintained their licenses to practice, though they may still be capable of performing certain professional tasks. Using these volunteers for any license-regulated activities will require working at the state level to modify laws governing licensure and public protection.

² Some MRC units may not have a database system that can be accessed by local emergency managers or public health officials during an emergency or during non-emergency periods. In this case, it is recommended that MRC volunteers carry some form of identification that also indicates their skills and the activities they are qualified to perform in an emergency medical or public health situation. 

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Last Updated on 8/28/2006