I’m doing a new volunteer thing, and it involves being “on call”. The organization is brand new, so there’s no prior history about how we do this. I’m hearing a range of how immediately available we need to be, that is, how quickly we need to be able to start driving to an arbitrary site in the county. I think I heard 30 minutes, somewhere, and “a few hours” at another point. Of course, this is going to depend on the nature of what we’re doing: we’re being dispatched by police to scenes of traumatic events to support people personally affected by the event. I’m really looking for a more general impression of what being on call means for people who have done it – and, practically, tips on accommodating this in your busy life.
Unfortunately, we don’t have enough volunteers in my opinion. This means I’ll have about ten on call days per month. That’s way more days than I meant to limit myself. I hope more will join. As far as actually getting the call, I think we anticipate that it will only happen about 3 times per year for each volunteer. It’s the on call limitations I’m thinking about here, not the actual event calls per se.
IIn this case I believe that on call means that you get there as soon as possible without delay in order to relieve the first responders from having to handle uninjured victims and bystanders so that they could get back to their work of saving lives and securing a accident or crime scene.
Seems to me to be very serious undertaking on your part.
I can’t tell if you’re involved in the org directly, or are volunteering for the org, but I’d pressure them to define precisely the on call expectations. Particularly if this is emergency services related.
If someone’s health or safety will be impacted because your definition of on call is different than another volunteer’s definition of on call, that’s a huge problem.
Without alignment, the org can lose credibility, and individual volunteers can end up in traumatic experiences themselves (I failed my responsibility by not showing up in time).
Years ago I was managing the systems security unit for our organization. Someone was required to be on call 24/7 and available to possibly attend the computer room at work. Although I received a nominal hourly on call allowance every hour that I wasn’t actually at work, I was never required to go to the office out of hours.
However, to be available to go in meant that I had to take care with a lot of details in my private life - no drinking any amount that would prevent me driving/working, no spontaneously being hours away from work, no being at home alone with the kids while my wife went out/away, no being anywhere that I couldn’t be contacted.
I ended up finding it so tedious that I let my staff split the job, and the on call allowance, among themselves. They thought that I was a saint, giving them shares of an allowance that didn’t end up requiring anything more than to carry a phone and a backup pager.
A lot of it is going to depend on the specifics - I had a job where I was on-call to answer phone calls and make decisions all the time unless I was actually on vacation but I wasn’t ever going to be expected to show up in person immediately. If I had to show up at all ( which in 15 years never happened) a few hours would have been soon enough and it was never only me on-call , so I didn’t have to arrange my life so that I was never ten hours away , or under sedation or drunk. That’s way different from being a volunteer firefighter or EMT who is on-call for certain shifts. If you are going to be on call ten days a month , my guess is that you will have to restrict your life in some ways for those ten days - no drinking, outpatient surgery , etc those days. But maybe you’ll be able to be responsible for small children if you can arrange alternate care quickly enough to respond in the acceptable time period.
I’ve had lots of “on call” experience, direct and vicarious, paid and volunteer, busy and very un-busy. It’s important that clear expectations be articulated beforehand about a few things:
How often will you be on call? I saw a very frustrating situation develop with a medical practice where being on call meant lost sleep and disrupted activities, partners quitting as a result, more call for the remaining ones, more quitting, etc.
That may not apply to your “3 times a year,” but might if the limitations become too onerous. You may find that, instead of getting more to join, you may lose people; it’s very frustrating to train and prepare and put in the on-call hours and hardly ever perform the duties you signed up for. Trust me, on this.
What are the limitations? Not drinking alcohol never bothered me, but having to be within 20 minutes of work meant no hiking, no visits to certain friends’ houses, etc. (Also no recipes that would be spoiled by turning off the stove and coming back hours later. And, strangely enough, very little napping - I couldn’t relax enough.)
Will you have to respond in any kind of uniform? With any gear or paperwork? Then have that uniform clean and with you at all times.
How will you be contacted? Around me there are LOTS of cell phone dead spots. On call, I would have to avoid certain areas of town, certain stores where phones don’t receive, etc.
These are just a few thoughts. I don’t know exactly how they’d apply to your situation, but I hope they’re helpful.
Can you share more about what you’ll be doing; is it counseling / emotional support or more physical support (Red Cross arranging hotel & food after being displaced by a fire)? Do you need anything physically with you when you go to the scene (food for others, vouchers, etc)? Do you need a company vehicle w/ supplies to go to the scene or will you be driving POV (personally owned vehicle)? Do you need a badge/card or jacket to ID you to be able to get into the scene & thru the police tape? How long do you estimate being on-scene at an average call & where will you be working, inside the police station or outside in the elements? Do you want to keep personal gear with you at all times, in a ‘go bag’ - snacks if the call comes in right as you were about to sit down & eat, rain gear, cold gear, drinks for hot days, etc.? Can you stop for coffee/cold drink on the way to a call?
What is the expectation for you to be enroute after being notified; how long do you have timewise? Can you shower first at 4am? Can you take the groceries home & put away the cold stuff? Can you go to a restaurant? What if the family is with you when you get a call, can they go with you (& again, what’s your average on-scene time; they don’t want to sit in your car for hours) or must they be dropped off at home or do you need to take two vehicles every time you go out when you’re on call? Can you just skip a day if you have something to do or does someone need to get coverage for you & is that someone you? What happens if a call comes in while you’re at work? What happens if a call comes in at 6am & it’ll make you late for work? What happens if it comes in at 2am & you’re a zombie at work the next day; is that a safety issue, do you work with machinery or in a lab vs in an office? Do you need your phone attached to your hip at all times when you’re on call; do you carry your phone when you run out to the mailbox, or out to the grill to flip the burgers, or when you mow the lawn, can you hear your phone ring when you’re in the shower? Is there a protocol for a second notification? I can tell you if I run outside for a minute I don’t check my phone immediately when I come back inside.
I’m a volunteer first responder; technically, we’re on 24x7 but it’s perfectly acceptable to press ‘unavail’ when a call comes in; they realize we have paid jobs, & family events, & otherwise might just be too far away to respond quickly enough & our response procedures differ depending upon which side of the house it is/what type of call it is.
I’m a medical courier and I get to set my on call times. Currently I’m available Tuesday to Friday from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and 24/7 on weekends.
When I first started I was always worried about going anywhere or doing anything that took me more than 30 minutes from the Red Cross facility. Now I’m more relaxed. For example, I’ll go grocery shopping but leave it to my husband to pick up anything refrigerated. (I don’t want meat or dairy sitting in my car.)
If anything crops up I can call dispatch and tell them I’m not available. I can decline a run but I feel really guilty afterwards.
A former co-worker used to volunteer for a very similar agency (Trauma Intervention Program). I don’t remember all the details, but I know she tried to get to the emergency as quickly as she could get dressed and get there, and that her only plans for on-call nights were to be at home, in case a call came in. To the best of my recollection she was only on-call 1 night a week, and usually anticipated going to a call at least once a month. She was helping people at the absolute worst time of their life. The reactions she got ranged from meeting lifelong friends to people that were 1 step away from violence.
When I worked as a computer programmer in the 70’s , I was solely responsible for a small suite of programs. There was only an occasional change by the customer and the programs were working reliably.
Anyway I was based in London (England) and the computer centre was in Cardiff (Wales.)
Surprisingly one run of the suite failed.
So my boss said “You’ll have to go down to Cardiff immediately and fix it.”
(I knew I would get my travel and accommodation paid for as expenses, so was happy enough.)
I asked “How long do I stay down there?”
“Until it’s fixed!”
Fortunately I solved it in 2 days.
(If you want to know more, just ask…)
I spent most of my 40 years working in some form of on-call. Conceptually not much to add. I’ll try to round up the high points.
The org must have clear guidelines for what’s expected. Max time delay to callback HQ if notified, max time delay to depart [wherever] towards scene, max time delay to be on-scene, maximum expected duration on-scene without relief, on-call drinking, on-call sleeping, required equipment, etc.
Having known shift times are important. Being on-call 12 hours a day on two consecutive days is very different from being on call for 24 hours straight once. Being able to trade shifts with others is also important.
People being people, if they’re on-call 100 days per year and get called out twice, pretty quickly 100% of whatever strictures the org tries to put on their on-call behavior will be ignored by most workers. Doubly so since these are volunteers, not employees. Which in turn means a sizeable fraction of actual call-outs will be mishandled with people not meeting whatever criteria there are. because they quite reasonably assumed that today would be yet another day where they were not going to be called. But they were. Oops.
The hardest things to staff for are the very rare events where there are very high consequences for not responding and responding well. Unfortunately that sounds exactly like the situation you and your org are in.
Ultimately, this sounds like a do-gooder exercise. Which is a wonderful thing to have. But the county emergency services won’t grind to a halt if it doesn’t exist or fails. Trying to ensure all your volunteers care about equally and have similarly free or constrained home lives will be important to minimize intra-volunteer resentment.
We need paperwork, handouts, badges. Keeping those in the car.
POV. We are only allowed to go in pairs, for safety reasons, and we drive POV to a meeting place and then take just one car to the scene.
Yes. Badge.
Half an hour to an hour. We will be at crime scenes; typically homes or businesses, and not clear how often indoors and how often outdoors.
Yes, probably. I’m a hiker and keep stuff like this in the car all the time anyway, more or less.
Doubt it, but good question!
This is what I’ve heard a range for. I think half an hour or so to be enroute. I think that implies we will start driving from someplace already in the county, but not necessarily any specified place.
We’re submitting availability schedules and receiving a chart of which two people are on call each day, to respond as a pair. I just had something come up for several hours tomorrow morning, and let the organizer know, and she said no problem and thanked me. It’s somebody else getting coverage.
I’m retired. But I’m critically interested in the answer to these because I’m the only retired volunteer. I’m not about to agree to being on call each MTWTF!
I figure the phone’s attached to my hip. Hadn’t thought about mowing, but think I can hear it in the shower.
I guess if I have to detach the phone from my hip, I’m checking it immediately after.
We’re having an organizational meeting in a couple weeks, and I realize I need to organize the questions I want answers to. This is a new organization, which I suppose means there are a lot of elements of how the system will work that just haven’t been figured out yet.
, I was solely responsible for a small suite of programs. There was only an occasional change by the customer and the programs were working reliably.
