New program at UF Veterinary Medical Center aimed at improving pet-owning client services

Many hands make light work.

That expression captures the spirit of the small animal hospital's Volunteer Advocate program, which began in July and has brought new faces - as well as helpful hands - to the client services area.

Volunteers greet clients and welcome visitors at the door, direct them to the check-in counter, offer a set of arms to hold an animal while a client signs in, and serve as liaisons between hospital clients and service technicians and students.

The program began to take form after Carol Ash, a retired eminent scholar from the UF College of Nursing, made former Dean Joe DiPietro aware of her interest in volunteering at the UF VMC. A casual conversation led to a lunch meeting between Ash, DiPietro and small animal hospital chief of staff Colin Burrows, B.Vet.Med., Ph.D., after which Ash was invited to help get a formal volunteer program off the ground. Burrows then asked Jo Ann Hostetler, the small animal hospital's coordinator of administrative services, to work with Ash to coordinate the program. Hostetler already had been visualizing such a program and was delighted when it was formalized.

"I said I didn't know anything about setting up a volunteer program, but I'm willing to give it a shot," said Ash, who recently helped list the new program with the Volunteer Center of Alachua County. "It's a challenge, but I like a challenge."

The program so far has involved a handful of volunteers from Oak Hammock community, where Ash lives, and a few others in the community who work in two- to four-hour slots performing various tasks - all aimed at enhancing the overall client service in the hospital.

"They converse with clients in the receiving area to see if they have concerns about their waiting time, have any general questions, would like a cup of coffee or directions to the nearest mall, anything that will help make their visit as pleasant and comfortable as possible," Hostetler said.

"If anyone voices a concern, the advocate comes out to talk to a member of the client service team, which has the appointment schedule and a record of the student who has picked up the medical record for that case," she said. "We call the student on their Nextel phone and ask for an update on the waiting time and relay that information to the client."

In most cases, clients are happy just to feel they have not been forgotten and someone is paying attention and aware of their situation, Hostetler added. Other tasks patient advocates perform include helping the clients at discharge.

"The clients may have dog food or medication in hand, holding on to their pet and trying to write a check, all at the same time," Hostetler said. "The advocate is there to give them a hand, or just ask how everything went with their visit. Often clients will be busy cashing out and then they will think of something they forgot to ask the student or the doctor. So the advocate might contact the student again."

The hospital's most visible patient advocate to date has been Ash, who prior to coming to UF in 1992 worked as the director of nursing education at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

"People are just so grateful for the help," Ash said. "Particularly if they have never been here before, they're confused and bewildered. When they say 'thank you so much,' it makes you feel like it's all worthwhile."

Burrows added that he could see the benefits of the program, even in a short period of time.

"The volunteers have made themselves invaluable in just a short while," he said. "They are valued members of our client service team. We just wish we had more of them."