The volunteers for Mission LifeLine at the American Heart Association (AHA) are present every meeting, contribute to email threads and take charge of the issues at hand. This group includes professors of medicine, politicians, Public Health Department staff, MPHs, Nurses, cardiologists and the cath lab staff. We have added EMTs and Fire Fighters from rural settings. It is not the group you’d expect to donate hours per month to a cause! The binding factor is belief in the service we will provide when finished. This process could not be launched from any single facility and must be politically neutral so the AHA is the perfect setting.
The other steps which will happen in 2011-2012 will be work in the community setting, with the Critical Access Hospitals and Emergency Medical Services. This will be a challenge and I hope we all can continue in our politically neutral stance.
• What was the best/worst/most challenging thing that happened this semester?
The best thing that happened was the team nominating me and selecting me to co-chair the evidenced based practice arm of the MLL work. This is a huge honor and I am the only non-physician leader in the state. There really have not been “worst” experiences. It has been smooth sailing thus far.
• What have you learned about yourself?
I learned to build these hours into my expectations of myself. All of volunteering in the past had been lectures, trips for veterans to Washington etc. Those are timed, come and pass through your life. This volunteering is rigorous, somewhat always present and time consuming. I tracked my hours for SL and I have >30 hours this semester. Had I not tracked that I would have guessed at 10 hours!
• What are your future service learning plans?
I will see this project to its completion or extinction. We want a statewide network of cardiology services for the very critically. I hope this finishes and has a product by the end of 2012. That may be ambitious. I want to take another group of veterans to Washington DC before the WWII veterans are only a memory. While in school I’m thrilled to get to the grocery every two weeks, so I have nothing new planned for the next 13 months!
