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Establishing: Activation and Deactivation of Volunteers

Emergencies can strain your public health system or require medical surge capacity. Conversely, some emergencies may not require medical or health volunteers. In the MRC, medical and health volunteers need to stand by to determine how a particular situation is developing and await authorization to be activated. Avoid basing your deployment decisions on information from unreliable sources.

Once a situation requires MRC utilization, volunteers will have to be notified. Different community situations may require different responses from the MRC. You should avoid situations where volunteers act based on their initiative, without authorization from their MRC unit. Provide volunteers with a written procedure for how they will be activated (including the name and/or title of the persons authorized to activate volunteers). Your activation method and a backup method (if applicable) should be tested regularly so that volunteers are familiar with the process.

It also is critical for volunteers to be notified promptly and clearly as to when their services are no longer needed. Once the need for early surge capacity support has passed, volunteers may interfere with the regular operations of their partnering organizations, which can lead to unwarranted harm.

An existing mechanism for deactivating volunteers helps the overall response effort function smoothly and safely. These specifics should be integrated into training and exercising unit plans with your MRC volunteers.

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Last Updated on 8/23/2006