Sentara Healthcare Launches Nonclinical Resource Pool for Staff Volunteers

The program allows nonclinical team members to take on everyday tasks so their frontline colleagues can focus on patient care.

On any given day at one of Sentara Healthcare's hospitals, you might find Jillian Ouyang, a corporate strategic planner, stocking equipment shelves or Tasha Ringo, an Optima Health claims processor, cleaning rooms.

The unique teamwork is part of Sentara's efforts to quell pandemic-caused stress and strain for healthcare workers via the new Nonclinical Resource Pool program in which nonclinical employees can volunteer their time to help clinical colleagues.

The program was created to support healthcare workers on the frontline amid the current omicron variant surge.

Volunteers handle such tasks as fetching materials, distributing meal trays, and any other jobs that allow the clinical staff to focus on patient care.

The health system has had a COVID task force in place for about two years, along with a clinical resource pool with staff that rotate to different areas of need across the system, says Terrie Edwards, Sentara's corporate vice president.

"We have about 20,000 [full-time employees] across our system, and there are about 6,000 that are in corporate services or health plans or finance and other areas, and they want to help," she says. "They're highly engaged, motivated employees. What would be the best ways to engage them and what roles could they play in the hospital?"

John Michael Eargle, division vice president for system service lines, designed and developed the program for nonclinical employees.

"From a design perspective, the way that it really worked was we created a standard survey and it was distributed out to those 6,000 employees, and it asked them to sign up for shifts," Eargle says.

"We created seven positions of need that were identified within our acute care hospital settings and those nonclinical employees had the opportunity to volunteer at their home hospital or their regional based hospital in those positions," he says.

The hospitals within the system sent a list of things that needed to be done at their facility. Using the answers from the initial survey, Eargle and his team matched those individuals up with the positions they favored in a way that supply and demand would be balanced.

In two weeks, program volunteers completed more than 3,000 hours—an average of 228 hours per day—with nearly 500 nonclinical team members having expressed interest.

"The volunteers were incredibly grateful as well to be able to help out their hospital and clinical-based teams in the acute care setting," Eargle says.

Initially, the program was to be used throughout the system until February 12, after which the need for volunteers will be evaluated on a weekly basis. However, because of such positive reception to the program, Edwards says the health system is looking into ways to make it permanent.

Bridget Frazier's job is usually to process claims, but volunteering through the program has been an eye-opening experience, she says.

"For us that work from home, I think it's a great opportunity to break us from the routine and to come out and help," she says.

"It feels good to give back to my workplace," Ouyang says. "I feel like everyone who has been working in the hospitals are superheroes. We can't thank them enough for their hard work and truly they are the backbone to keep us going."