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Successful Strategies for Recruitment of Emergency Medical Volunteers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2013

Anne Rinchiuso Hasselmann
Anne Rinchiuso Hasselmann*
Affiliation:
Ms Hasselmann was with the Bureau of Emergency Management, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, at the time this article was authored.
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Anne Rinchiuso Hasselmann. (e-mail arinchiuso@hotmail.com).
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Abstract

Objectives

A robust medical volunteer program is critical to ensuring a successful response to public health and medical emergencies. The New York City (NYC) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene created the NYC Medical Reserve Corps in 2003 to build a multidisciplinary team of health professionals who wish to assist NYC with response during large-scale health emergencies. This article reports on the search to determine which recruitment activities have been most successful to date, with the goal of modeling future activities upon those that worked best.

Methods

A retrospective review of effectiveness of recruitment strategies to identify and register new NYC Medical Reserve Corps volunteers was undertaken.

Results

A broad range of recruitment activities have been implemented since the program's inception, with varying degrees of success. Various recruitment modalities were tried, including direct invitations to licensed professionals by the NYC Health Commissioner and announcements through professional organization partners. The direct invitation by the NYC Health Commissioner to health professionals licensed in 1 of the 5 boroughs of NYC has proved to be the most successful recruitment tool to date.

Conclusions

The local health commissioner or other trusted community figure is an excellent messenger for recruiting emergency volunteers. It is also critical that recruitment messages reach as many potential volunteers as possible to ensure that the requisite number of volunteers and mix of professional disciplines are identified. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2013;7:266-271)

Keywords

medical volunteersMedical Reserve Corpsemergency volunteersvolunteer recruitment strategies
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , June 2013 , pp. 266 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2013 

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