Our clinic duties…

During our AGM last week, we were informed by our HIV clinic coordinator about the request by SN, the staff nurse at the Ipoh HIV clinic asking us if possible to send in volunteers every Wednesdays instead of our current practice of every 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month.

I understand that they probably need more help now that they have HIV clinic every Wednesdays and Thursdays, when previously the clinic is only on Wednesdays. If we can send our teams every Wednesday, then maybe SN can fix the appointments of new cases to be on Wednesdays so she can easily refer their cases to us. Otherwise, it can be quite difficult for her when there are new problematic cases to be referred on a clinic day when we don’t have any volunteers there.

On our part, for the moment we only have 7 people available for clinic duty ie those who are either no longer working, self employed or with flexi working hours like myself. It will be difficult for those working 9 – 5 to join us for clinic duty as they will need to take leave from work, which is unfair to them given that this is just our voluntary work. Previously we used to divide the teams into groups of three, but due to lack of manpower, we’re reduced the teams to groups of two with one team ie mine, having 3. And how come my team has 3 members instead of 2? That’s because the other 2 in my team are both trainees.

By sending in volunteers every alternate week, each volunteer involved will be on duty once every 1 1/2 months. My last duty was on the first Wednesday of March, so my next duty will be on the second Wednesday of April.

But if we are to fulfill SN’s request, we probably need to be on duty more often. Now, I am not sure if every volunteer in the HIV clinic team would be willing and able to go for clinic duty more frequently. Maybe what we can do is stick to the present duty roster, and for those who can do more, we may just slot in their names for the Wednesdays in between. Or maybe we revamp the teams. Besides, I feel that the 2 trainees in my team are ready to be confirmed and as such they should be able to be on clinic duty without me supervising.

We will have to discuss this further in our coming Board meeting end of this month.

In addition to more clinic duties, we were also informed that the Taiping HIV clinic also needs our services. Aiyo, how lah? We don’t even have enough to cover Ipoh HIV clinic! Again we will need to discuss this in the next Board meeting. Maybe we can consider sending volunteers once a month. If we do, then definitely we will have to pay for their mileage. In addition maybe we can get new volunteers staying in Taiping to join us. At least during the initial stages they can be trained by the senior volunteers on clinic duty at Taiping, then later on we can leave the Taiping HIV clinic to Taiping volunteers. That is, IF we can get volunteers from there who, again, are either self employed, have flexi working hours or are no longer working. Whatever it is, their “cari makan” jobs come first. We don’t want their jobs to be affected by their voluntary work.

So, anyone in Ipoh and/or Taiping wanna be a volunteer?