Volunteers Recruited to Give TLC

              The Shreveport Times
—-Women's News
At Confederate Memorial
Page 3-E Sunday, Aug 20, 1972 Society News
Volunteers Recruited to Give TLC
By Margaret Martin
Times Medical Writer
Prescription: Tender Loving Care
(TLC).
A schmaltzy cliche, but treatment
pregnant women get when t h e y go to
their personal physician, and something
Dr. Arthur Fort wants the private
patients of the state of Louisiana to get
when they come to Confederate Memo-rial
Medical Center.
TLC: A pat of reassurance on the
shoulder, an assist While removing her
clothes, something as simple as a smile
— and always somecae with time to
answer questions.
Not m u c h to ask. But virtually
impossible to deliver at Confederate in
the past when two nurses and an aide —
on a given busy morning — were saddled
with myriad necessary c l e r i c a l or
mundane chores in addition to their
professional duties, and had no time for
extras.
But volunteers could do it.
So Fort — head of obstetrics and
gynecology for both Confederate and
Louisiana State U n i v e r s i t y Medical
School at Shreveport — went to Mrs.
Albert Stephens, head volunteer for the
Shreveport JunLr League.
"I figured they were the people to
talk to," he added.
He told her he needed help.
She was delighted.
"We've been trying to get out there
(Confederate) for years," Mrs. Stephens,
wife of a Shreveport allergist, saicl in an
interview at her two-story Centenary
Boulevard home.
I Although the summer program is a
pilot project, "we'll continue as long as
Confederate wants us."
And she confided, "We hope by doing
a good job here we can get volunteers
throughout the hospital."
* Junior League members make up the
majority of the 14 volunteers, but "we
also recruited from the Volunteer Ser-vices
Bureau."
Although Mrs. Stephens said the
Junior League is trying to get away from
the wealthy, socialite image, she admit-ted
that, "most volunteers had not been
exposed to this type of experience."
ANOTHER ELEMENT
"No one knew what it would be like,"
she added. "It as an exposure to a whole
other element of people — dependent on
charity type care."
Although Fort initially discussed the
matter of volunteers with Junior League
o f f i c i a l s , placement is through the
Volunteer Services Bureau, headed by
Mrs. William C. Gilmer.
She emphasized that members of the
community are needed for the program
and do not have to be members of the
Junior League.
She feels it offers an opportunity for
women "to serve to help meet the health
needs of the disadvantaged people of the
community."
If you are interested, call Mrs. Gilmer
at 424-1509 for an interview.
The 14 volunteers work 8:30-11:30
a.m. two half days or one whole day a
week. Obstetrics-gynecology clinics are
s c h e d u l e d eveij morning and two
afternoons a week. They expect 16
volunteers in the fall.
Most of them come, Mrs. Stephens
said, "a few minutes early ana always
stay a few minutes late. They say you
just can't leave . . . you don't walk away
when you know they netJ you."
A typical volunteer is Mrs. Kenneth
Williams, a physical education teacher at
Byrd High School in the winter, who said
as she labeled a tube holding a blood
sample, "I've found my niche in life."
Mrs. Williams and non-Junior Leagu-er
Mrs. Dwight Tietjen — whose husband
is a physical therapist — were working
in the narrow pasageway which sep-arates
the examining rooms from a
counter holding supplies and equipment.
WEIGHED AND WAITING
Patients, many young and scared,
some unmarried — all poor — had
already been weighed and were waiting
in line for a blood test.
"I'd like to go on all year long,"
commented Mrs. Williams, filling out the
paper, which attached to a rubber band
is stretched around the test tube.
Overhearing the conversation, a shy
and pretty patient said, "You taught at
Byrd last year. I went to Byrd last year.
I was a freshman."
"You did?" smiled Mrs. Williams,
"You going back?"
"Yes," answered the girl attending
her first obstetrics clinic.
To another patient, who grimaced as
she was about to have the needle thrust
into the vein in her arm, Mrs. Williams
said, "Look at me — it's not that bad."
Mrs. Tietjen stepped forward to hold
the pregnant woman's hand.
The volunteers were there when the
doctors came, there to assist with
draping the patients, put the patient's
legs in the stirrups for a pelvic
examination, telling tlhem to "scoot way
down."
Volunteers like Mrs. J. C. McClure,
who admitted her nervousness the first
day, but who looked and sounded like she
had worked in hospitals all of her life as
she handed the resident a Pap Test swab
and slide, took it from him, dropped in a
bottle, presented him with the gonorrhea
culture and swab.
Zippering up the patient's dress, she
pointed to the waiting room and added,
"Wait out there and go to diet clinic."
Quickly as another entered, she or-dered,
"Climb up on the end of the
table."
VITAMINS AND WORDS
"We give them vitamins and litera-ture
about being a m o t h e r , " she
explained as she pulled several white
boxes from a carton and placed them in
the cloth-enclosed waiting rooms.
She's as familiar with a speculum and
a t e n a c u l u m as though they were
instruments in the kitchen where she
prepares meals for a family of six — not
medical equipment.
Mrs. Harold Quinn Jr. was reticent
about talking of her part in the clinic,
but said that "it is a program which
needs volunteers — Arthur Fort con-vinced
everybody of that."
"Tender loving care is a nice thing —
they need it an awful lot," she said,
adding that it means a lot to the patients
when you say, "Hi. How are you this
mornin'?"
She plans to continue working this
fall.
Mrs. E. P. Lee III is a school teacher
whose husband is a chemist. She has
worked hi inner city schools in Battle
Creek, Mich., so although at first the job
was "only my summer placement, it has
turned out to be extremely interesting.
I'm hoping to get back there next
summer."
"They make you feel very useful,"
she said, "so appreciative that you have
time to relax and talk to them."
Plantation wife, Mrs. J. L. Sloan says
the volunteer work at C o n f e d e r a t e
"makes me feel like I've been in a
shell."
"I liked it from the start — from the
very start," she added with emphasis.
"It's not like other volunteer work —
they let us do so much."
She's pleased that the doctors discuss
the various procedures and diseases.
"They let us see what they are doing and
let us ask questions."
POPULAR PLACEMENT
"It'll be the m o s t popular place-ment,"
she predicted.
The volunteers also include Mrs.
Patrick Cooney, Mrs. C. C. Townsend,
Linda Tombrello, from the Volunteer
Services Bureau, and Mrs. James R.
Lang, Mrs. Neal B a r e m o r e , Peggy
McClure, Mrs. Robert D. Fletcher, Mrs.
Zama Jones, all Junior League mem-bers.
They escort the patients to the diet
clinic, change the paper on the examin-ing
room table, pull charts, w e i g h
patients, carry specimens to the labora-tory,
stamp the patient's n a m e on
necessary papers — a l l n o n n u r s i n g
duties. They can't, for instance, draw
blood, give medications, work a catheter.
The nurses like them, though. "I was
skeptical at first," said Pat Ramsey,
who has been working in the clinic for
six years.
A calm - cool - and-colleeted-in-the-midst-
of all-the-confusion-type n u r s e ,
Mrs. Ramsey, pointing into space, said,
"We did every bit of it before — Mary
(Pinesett, the aide) and two nurses . . ."
"Phone answering helps us a whole
lot," she said, referring to the constantly
Patient Records must be kept up to date and one of the functions of the
volunteers from the Junior League and the Volunteer Services Bureau is
to assist Confederate personnel in this duty. Dr. William J. Moss,
second-year resident in obstetrics and gynecology, explains the procedure
to Linda Tombrello, who is from the Volunteer Services Bureau. (Times
Photo by John Denison)
ringing instrument in one corner of the
clinic.
Mrs. Pinesett said, "I think they are
wonderful," adding that the volunteers
have certainly made her work easier.
"With just two nurses — I pitched in
and helped. We are a team. We work as
a team. I am concerned about the
patients," Mrs. Pinesett added.
Fort's obstetrics-gynecology volunteer
corps has elicited so much interest that
two sustaining Junior League members
have signed up for fall work, including a
past president, Mrs. Robert E. King.
Mrs. A. M. Leary — whose daughter
is placement chairman for the group —
said she has done "volunteer work all
my life. My mother died in January and
I needed something to occupy time."
During World War II "I worked in a
Charity Hospital in New Orleans clinic."
NEEDED HELP
Fort emphasizes that the nurses and
the aides have been doing an amazing
job with the patient load. "They get less
pay and less ideal working conditions
than on the outside, but they needed
help."
He w a n t s the ob-gyn residents in
training to treat patients (18,000 in a
year, 356 in an average week) "just like
they are at the finest private clinic
around."
"Just like they would treat my wife,"
he adds.
The physician is adamant on the
subject, but he also r e a l i z e s that
"crowded space and not enough people"
make the task difficult.
For the future, Fort would 1 i k e to
have "a volunteer meet the ob-gyn
patient at the front door of the hospital,
introduce themselves, welcome her to
the hospital and bring her upstairs."
Then, as if not to sound too ambitious
he adds, "If not at the front door of the
hospital, at least at the front door of the
clinic."