HOSPITALS

Neale Gulley

Apr. 21, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- As National Volunteer Week began Sunday, area hospitals were renewing calls for the health care industry's unsung heroes.

Kenmore Mercy hopes to expand its "Forks and Spoons" program to help ensure good nutrition for patients with difficulty feeding themselves, the hospital's Manager of Public Relations Dawn Cwierley said.

Director of Clinical Nutrition Naheed Ali-Sayeed was asked to begin the program in October 2007, as part of an initiative aimed at improving the way elderly patients are cared for. It then extended, she said, to include about six or seven volunteers whose goal is to help feed any patient in the hospital who can't do so themselves.

"Obviously if they're not able to feed themselves, if they're not eating they're not going to get better," Ali-Sayeed said.

She added the initiative is one of many utilizing the hospital's roughly 300 volunteers, but needs additional support to feed an ever-changing number of patients three square meals each day of the week.

"We have many more patients that need feeding," she said.

Patients are guaranteed an adequate diet while staying at the hospital, but Ali-Sayeed said nurse's aides may be summoned for more pressing patient needs in lieu of feeding people. In the meantime, food becomes cold and unappetizing.

"And then what are the chances they'll actually finish the meal?" she asked.

Each volunteer may choose the times they're available, usually to visit each person on a list of five patients at mealtime. Breakfast is served from 7:30 to 10 a.m.; lunch is from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner runs from 4 to 7 p.m.

Things like age, fatigue, limited mobility, drug interactions and various disease processes can all affect appetite and the physical ability to eat.

"It takes a special person," Ali-Sayeed said of the volunteers, who undergo training on administering nutrition as well as disease transmission. "Feeding somebody is kind of an intimate thing and some people aren't comfortable with that."

Over at DeGraff, Director of Marketing Phyllis Gentner said many of the hospital's 150 "unsung heroes" populate a second-floor office known as the errand and escort center.

For just the last month, some of the same volunteers have been recruited for a new program to help orient patients to their rooms.

"It's made such a difference for our patients just to say 'hello, how are you are you comfortable enough,' " Gentner explained.

A checklist given to volunteers includes everything from explaining how to work the television set to calling a nurse.

"This serves two purposes," she said of the new program as well as volunteers' traditional role running errands for patients. "This brings access right through the telephone to the volunteers to become the arms and legs for a person but also as a support center -- they're this wonderful group of people who are the backbone of DeGraff Hospital," she said.

Both hospitals have planned events to honor their volunteers this week, such as a Friday luncheon set to honor those who donate their time for Kenmore Mercy. DeGraff is already showing their appreciation with daily themes like pizza, doughnuts and the like.

"It keeps you young, it's wonderful, it's just great -- people who volunteer, when they're sick we worry about them, it's just like another family really," 35-year DeGraff volunteer MaryJane Klaes said.

Working Mondays and Fridays ever since getting involved all those years ago, she said it was a newspaper article calling on volunteers that prompted her to get involved.

She'll be 83 next month.

"I think I'm going to die with my boots on here -- I can't see myself quitting, is what I'm saying," she said.

Klaes, who said she wouldn't do it if she got paid, is mother to seven and has taken on numerous tasks at the hospital like running flowers from room to room and helping people in wheelchairs get around. Monday evening, getting in touch with her was as easy as calling the hospital's reception desk where she was at work answering the phones.

"Anything they ask us to do we do. It's just wonderful and I recommend it to everybody."

Contact reporter Neale Gulley at 693-1000, ext. 114.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0356-34289108