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Establishing: Action Steps Checklist

The checklist of possible action steps below follows the basic outline of this particular technical assistance topic. It is important to remember that these are only suggestions. They serve as a quick reference guide to stimulate your thoughts of the complexities you may face in your Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) unit. You may choose to follow a different approach. If so, the Office of the Civilian Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps welcomes your best practices.

Introduction

Attend carefully to your internal organizational needs, particularly as you devote substantial resources to external coordination and volunteer relations.
- A healthy, well-run organization is the foundation of every successful MRC unit.

Developing a Roadmap

Revisit your unit’s mission and identified roles and ensure the unit is fully integrated with local response partners.
Determine objectives that will help fulfill the unit’s role.
Determine the scope of practice for your various types of volunteers in the unit’s role(s).

Tracking and Updating Information

Determine the information you will need as you of manage your MRC unit. Set up a system to track it as easily as possible.

Developing a Volunteer Database

Determine what you want your volunteer information database to do. Which outputs and reports will you need? Which functions must they perform?
Design your database to include the information you will need to collect to fulfill these functions or outputs.
- Balance between anticipating future information needs and building a system that overly exceeds your near-term needs.
Choose a database format—paper or computer-based—that fits your needs for data entry and retrieval and your available resources.
- Determine if your data and system will need to be compatible with your local response partners and if your state has a database system for registering volunteer health professionals your MRC unit could participate in.
Ensure privacy of volunteer information
Decide which data you will need to collect from prospective volunteers before you begin interviewing them.
Design your volunteer application forms so that they are easy to complete and so it is easy to transfer their data into a computer system (if this is the chosen format).

Establishing an Identification System

Determine if there is an existing identification system in use at the local or state level.
Work with local response partners to determine the most useful information to include on your MRC volunteers’ identification (ID) cards.
- Collect a recent photo, full name, an ID number, and the MRC unit name, at a minimum.
- Consider including driver’s license or other professional credential ID numbers.
Determine, with local response partners, which information to include on MRC ID cards to quickly signal a volunteer’s professional training and other necessary credentials or qualifications.
Choose a secure method of producing the card so that IDs cannot be easily made or duplicated without authorization.
Remember not to confuse an ID card with other badges that may be used by your response partners during an emergency or other deployment.
Update IDs to match changes in a volunteer’s profile or to reflect changes in the information system used among your response partners.
Ask for the return of IDs when volunteers are no longer active members.

Collecting Engagement and Utilization Data

Develop a volunteer activity tracking form.
Use this form to track the number of hours your volunteers devote to their MRC activities. Categorize these numbers by activity and professional background.
Use this form to track of the professional backgrounds or skill sets represented by your volunteer corps.
Develop an engagement or utilization form to help track the information you might want to consider later, when improving your system or filing an incident report.
Use this form to track of the details of particular volunteer engagements or utilization, including exercises.
- Note the circumstances involved in deployment or utilization, the sequence of events from start to finish, the names of other organizations involved and their roles and actual participation, difficulties encountered regarding communication or other activation systems, effective procedures, resources consumed during the engagement, and potentially useful resources and resources that were unnecessary, etc.
Use your engagement and utilization data during post-response feedback sessions with volunteers and response partners to improve future response efforts.

Maintaining a Record of Local Contacts, Partners, and Meetings

Maintain a database or card file of local contacts and community response partners.
Maintain a log or ongoing record of phone calls, correspondence, meetings, and other exchanges with local contacts.
- Use this log to record dates, times, places, and individuals involved and their organizational affiliations, if any. Also, note key topics for discussion, agreements, conflicts, or stalemate issues.

Establishing and Clarifying Policies and Procedures

Clarify your rules of engagement and inform all involved what conduct you expect from your MRC volunteers.

Policies Governing Unit Leadership

Document bylaws to govern activities of the advisory board or other governing body, if applicable.

Application and Screening Procedures

Design an application form that captures the necessary information about potential volunteers effectively.
Choose a combination of screening procedures, document guidelines, and apply these guidelines consistently.
Document guidelines for determining if a volunteer is suitable for the MRC unit.

Volunteer Liability and Risk Management Policies

Research the laws in your area that govern volunteers, Good Samaritan acts, medical and health practices, and general liability.
Seek legal counsel to determine the best policies and procedures to reduce the risk of harm and legal liability for your volunteers and your organization, given your local laws.
Implement policies and procedures that exceed your community-set standards. Lead your community in reducing risk of harm.
Train your volunteers to understand the importance of liability and risk reduction policies and procedures. Confirm they understand how to implement them.
Develop a code of conduct or other documented rules regarding volunteer behavior (particularly on rules about safety and security of volunteers and those they serve) and ensure it is distributed to all volunteers.
Determine and document behavior that would be grounds for dismissal from the MRC unit. Apply these consistently.

Communication and Decisionmaking Protocols

Articulate and convey proper procedures for relaying information, decisionmaking, and giving/following orders. These should be based on locally recognized systems for managing emergency.
Practice exercising communication, decisionmaking, and leadership protocols.
Determine, with your response partners, which individuals or organizations are authorized to declare a local state of emergency and which official declaration may activate MRC volunteer utilization.
Designate those responsible for indicating when your MRC volunteers should be utilized and when they should cease. Provide volunteers with a written description of this process.

Required and Recommended Volunteer Training

Provide an orientation to all volunteers to familiarize them with your unit’s operations, policies and procedures, and the MRC Core Competencies.
Identify the gaps between your volunteers’ current knowledge and what is needed for them to fulfill their roles in emergency response, based on your unit’s role and your volunteers’ scope of practice,
Determine any other training that might assist your volunteers in performing their roles more effectively.

Revisiting Unit Objectives and Documenting Activities

Ensure that planning—strategically, financially, and operationally—is a regular part of your unit’s internal administrative tasks and culture.
Establish objectives that support your mission and meet your community’s needs. Revisit these objectives periodically to determine if they remain strategically focused.
Maintain a record of progress toward your objectives that includes: key events, target and completion dates where appropriate, any changes in the objectives and the reasons for the changes, and the process that led to abandoning an objective before completion.
Record accomplishments important to your MRC, even if they were not part of your formal plan. Use these accomplishments as success stories for promoting your MRC.

Securing Long-Term Sustainability

Consider each activity of your MRC regarding its potential for supporting your unit’s long-term viability. Your efforts can work together toward that objective.
Ensure that your mission and community contribution remain sufficiently broad so that you lose relevance and vitality. Consider your unit’s mission regarding public health, community preparedness, and emergency response.
- Recognize that it is important to maintain a focus and not distribute your resources too thin.
Develop a 3- to 5-year plan for securing resources for maintaining your organization into the future.

Diversifying Your Medical Reserve Corps Activities

Consider public health and emergency response, regardless of whether your MRC focuses on only one.
Involve your MRC in existing public health and emergency preparedness initiatives. Determine if your MRC can benefit from some of the resources allocated to those initiatives.
Establish links with vulnerable segments of your community (people with disability needs, groups with limited English-language proficiency, a low-income neighborhood, etc.). These groups will have special needs during non-emergencies and emergencies.
Consider the MRC’s possible role in existing organizations (professional schools, training efforts for medical and health professionals, professional organizations, etc.).

Leveraging Public- and Private-Sector Resources

Develop a budget that clearly specifies your needs to accomplish your objectives and which resources will be required.
Share your budget, as appropriate, with funding sources, community champions, response partners, and others who might help provide resources.
Diversify your resources so that you have constant support. If one resource becomes exhausted, other resources can support your unit as you secure new resources.
Consider multiple resource types: funds, in-kind donations of goods and services, contributions of specialty knowledge, etc.
Inform government officials of your MRC’s progress. Local government funds also may be available.
Determine if your response partners have access to resources that you need and that they can share.

Supporting Your Cause With Evaluation Data

Develop ways of demonstrating your MRC’s effective stewardship through success stories, financial statements, progress reports, volunteer statistics, etc.

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Last Updated on 12/12/2007