During this COVID-19 pandemic, our island community needs you as a health care professional, those of you involved in mental health care and spiritual care, and those with administrative skills.
Join us!! : All you need to do is send us an email to: MRCmembership@vashonbeprepared.org.
Include your background and your contact information.
We are building our 4 teams: clinicians, nurses, Community Care Team (mental and spiritual health), and administrative support.
How we are fighting back against COVID-19: Our MRC is working in 3 main areas:
(1) COVID Testing and vaccination for island residents. We need HCW volunteers to help. For more on testing details: link. In support of Tribal / rural communities, we have developed our Rural Test & Trace Toolkit (RT3): link.
(2) Mental Health and Spiritual Health. We need volunteers (social workers, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and people involved in faith and spiritual care) to help support our 12,000 residents facing the dual threats of a life-threatening virus, closed businesses, and massive job losses.
(3) PPE acquisition and appropriate distribution.
We live in a special place, a place that gives us so much. This pandemic asks each of us to give back to our community during this time of peril. Please step up and contact us. Below is more about our Vashon MRC.
Click here to watch our short video
about the Vashon Medical Reserve Corps
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Come meet with us. We meet monthly on the 3rd Thursday at 3 p.m. for 1 hour. During the pandemic we are meeting by Zoom teleconferencing.
Who we are. Our team includes clinicians and nurses, mental health professionals and chaplains, pharmacists, veterinarians, funeral home staff, administrative support staff, and others. We organize ourselves using an ER team as a model - from initial encounter and triage, hands-on care and mental health support, to medication management.
MRCs rose from the rubble of the 9-11 attacks, recognizing the need for health-care professionals to prepare for disasters. The MRC is a partner program of Citizen Corps, a national network of volunteers dedicated to ensuring hometown security. Citizen Corps, along with the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Peace Corps, are part of the President's USA Freedom Corps.
Why an MRC? We choose to live an island in the Salish Sea, part of the Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire. Running below ground are major fault lines. Above are sleeping volcanoes, symbols of our state. Disasters have occurred here, such as the massive Cascadia earthquake in 1700. Our island home has a history of being socked by storms and scorched by fire. Climate change raises the ante. Medical historians can recount past pestilence, prologue to the current pandemic of COVID-19.
Today about 12,000 people live on Vashon-Maury Island. Homes are built on, or below unstable slopes prone to landslide. Look around and you'll see an aging population some of whom can be expected to have multiple medical problems on multiple medications.
On this island, we have no urgent care and no emergency room. We have a single pharmacy without a stockpile of medications. For these reasons and more, we as a health-care professionals will need to be able to secure our homes and family, and then meet to provide emergency care for our island community.
Our mission in 3 parts:
- Training
- Medical support to VIFR
- Put in place medical care "surge capacity" for disasters, both local and regional
When the emergency call comes:
We will report to Vashon Island Fire & Rescue, our MRC's sponsoring agency. We will also be working closely with paramedics of Medic One on Vashon and BLS providers of VIFR. Just like an ER team, we'll need to be able to do provide basics of triage, treat and support, and transfer when appropriate and when we can.
We are not alone:
Our MRC's housing agency and fiscal agent is VashonBePrepared. Our MRC is one rope in a safety net woven and supported by VashonBePrepared through the island's multiple volunteers. Included are:
EOC – Emergency Operations Center
CERT - Community Emergency Response Team
MERT – Marine Emergency Response Team
ACS – Auxillary Communications Service
NERO – Neighborhood Emergency Response Organization
Thank you for your interest.
Please join us.