Abstract
BackgroundHealth volunteers act as the link between the society and the healthcare system and are a symbol of people’s participation in the health maintenance and promotion. Despite the important role of health volunteers in the health system, it seems that they experience several problems. The aim of this study was empowering health volunteers through an action research.MethodsThis participatory action research was conducted through two continuous cycles of reflection and acting for change over 20 months, in a comprehensive health center in Southern of Fars province in Iran. Participants included 25 health volunteers; two instructors and an academic researcher as facilitator. In the first cycle the participants discovered the challenges of health volunteers, prioritized them, designed an action plan, and implemented it. At the end of this cycle, evaluation was done with the participants’ cooperation. The second cycle began with reflecting on the results of the first cycle and then after designing and implementing second action plan, final evaluation was done.ResultsQualitative content analysis in the first phase led to the emergence of four categories, including role confusion, inadequate volunteer training, deficits in attracting and keeping volunteers, and being unfamiliar to the public. After the implementation of the action plan the participants learned through reflection and immersing in action. Finally, quantitative and qualitative data showed improvement of knowledge and performance, satisfaction, effectiveness of programs and improvement in volunteer’s competence.ConclusionsClarification of volunteers’ roles, supporting volunteers to improve their knowledge and skills with coherent planning based on their educational needs, are appropriate management plans to attract and retain volunteers. By presenting their services to the society, they will be empowered and motivated to continue.
Highlights
Health volunteers act as the link between the society and the healthcare system and are a symbol of people’s participation in the health maintenance and promotion
We aimed to identify the problems of health volunteers and empower them through a participatory action research
After implementing the second action plan (Table 1), at the end of the second cycle we found that the public’s familiarity with health volunteers had increased from 4% to 36%
Summary
Health volunteers act as the link between the society and the healthcare system and are a symbol of people’s participation in the health maintenance and promotion. Despite the important role of health volunteers in the health system, it seems that they experience several problems. Health volunteers are people who spend their time and energy to serve other people and the society without receiving any money or financial reward [1, 2]. Since health volunteers are role models in the society, they can have long term effects on people’s understanding, beliefs, and attitudes [7, 8]. Social and health system factors affect the motivation and performance of health volunteers. Factors related to the health system include deficit in training and monitoring, insufficient financial rewards, high workload, insufficiency of services for the society, insufficient supervision, and insufficient support services such as transportation and job descriptions [1, 6, 10,11,12,13]
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