Even after 34 years in nursing, Jeanne Spears, RN, wasn’t ready to stay home when she retired in 1995. So she called the American Red Cross to volunteer.
“When I read the Red Cross description for disaster-operations nurses, it talked about helping people recover and return to the community afterward,” Spears said. “I thought, ‘Hey, I’ve been doing that for the last 25 years as a workers’-comp case manager for a private insurance company.’ ”
Although she has worked there as a volunteer, Spears considers her 15 years with the Red Cross a second nursing career. Last year, Spears was speechless when she learned she had received the Ann Magnussen Award for her dedicated service to the Red Cross.
“I have worked at the national headquarters often, so I know that the organization has many outstanding nurses,” she said. “All I could say was, “Really?’ I never even thought of getting something like that.”
The national award represents the organization’s highest level of nursing achievement. The fact that Spears got the award came as no surprise to others.
“Jeanne has done practically everything there is to do at the Red Cross,” said Ruben Brown, communications director for the Metropolitan Atlanta chapter.
Spears’ work there started slowly, however.
“When I called to volunteer, they were busy preparing for the [1996 Summer] Olympics and told me a nurse would call me. It took six months,” she said. “Then one night I got a call from a nurse who wanted to know if I could meet her at an apartment fire in Norcross. She gave me some forms and told me to gather information from the families affected. The organization wanted to meet needs, whether it was replacing medications or providing infant formula.”
“The good nuns at St. Joseph’s [Hospital, where she graduated from nursing school in 1961] had told us to ‘use your brain and improvise,’ so I could do that.”
Spears began going to other fires and helped open an emergency shelter after a tornado ripped through Dunwoody and other northern Atlanta suburbs in 1998.
“Before I joined the Red Cross, I didn’t realize all they did after disasters,” she said. “They replace medicines and health care equipment; triage emergency medical needs; provide shelter, a clothing allowance, a food allowance; and will advocate with an insurance company if needed.
“They set up emergency shelters and operate a computerized linking system that helps reunite off-scene family with victims. They do a lot more than blood drives.”
While heading the Red Cross Metropolitan Atlanta chapter’s effort to increase the number volunteers, Spears recruited more than 50 nurses and developed a team of health services leadership volunteers. She has trained disaster nurses in every district in Georgia, and now staffs the health services desk (via phone and Internet) of the national American Red Cross Disaster Operations Center, which guides chapters and staff during disaster-relief operations.
Helping at Ground Zero
“One of my most-rewarding experiences was going to New York City after the 9/11 disaster,” she said. “I was assigned to two hospitals near Ground Zero and developed integrated care teams and triage groups to meet the needs of survivors and their families. We offered all kinds of assistance and counseling.
“That was especially memorable because of all the different stories and the volume of cases that came across my desk, but anytime you work in disaster relief, there’s always something good about your day. There’s that warm feeling of knowing you’ve helped someone.”
Spears did “just-in-time disaster training” for many volunteers who came to help Hurricane Katrina victims in Atlanta in 2005.
“When people came off those planes, they had nothing. Some were wrapped in sheets,” she said. “The EMTs and nurses and others who showed up to help at the shelters were amazing. There were hours and hours of really difficult nursing assignments. I oversaw it, and it made me proud to be a nurse.”
Afterward, she volunteered to spend a month in Washington, D.C., where she helped sort through more than 30,000 health service records gathered from that disaster.
“There were records from shelters in five states stacked in boxes 4 feet high and 15 feet down one wall. It was overwhelming,” she said.
Spears headed a team of nurses who chose 31,000 records from 15 shelters and entered 26 points of data from the written records into computer spreadsheets. Experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Johns Hopkins University analyzed the data and provided summary reports for the Red Cross.
“That was one of the positive outcomes of Katrina,” Spears said. “We used that data to make revisions in our disaster-relief guidebook and [to] change nurse protocols.
“I’ve seen the Red Cross become a much stronger organization through the years and much more defined in what we do. I think it’s the top volunteer organization in the country.”
Spears is also the national liaison for the Red Cross to CDC and has trained a team of nurses to staff the Atlanta-based agency’s Emergency Operations Center.
She also still recruits new nursing volunteers.
“I tell them not to go by what I do. I work an average of 20 to 30 hours a week, because I have time and [I] want to, but even a few hours a week would be very valuable,” she said.
Some of the things volunteer nurses do include making follow-up calls or visits to families after disasters, providing community education and teaching CPR.
“From Day 1 of volunteering, I have been committed to the Red Cross nurse’s creed,” she said. “But the part I truly live by is, ‘Wherever disaster calls, there I shall go. I ask not for whom, but only where I am needed.’ That’s what nurses and the Red Cross do.”
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