Establish Authority
When you decide to create a Medical Response Team, consider establishing it as an independent department or section within the church, similar to the education department or the band. A medical team has special needs that are distinct from those of any other area within the church. It therefore requires specific job descriptions, policies, and practices related to medical care.
Create Your Job Description
After getting approval for your team, consider developing a job description that outlines your role. Describe what your role’s responsibilities include, the area where you can make independent decisions, and those that need additional approval. Describe how you interact with the other church departments in ways that you support them and how you need their support. Then, when you meet with those areas, give them a copy so they know how you can help them. Whenever introducing a new service, it takes a while for others to learn how to integrate it into their operations. Providing them with this document will help them adjust to having you as part of the team quickly.
Your Team
Creating your team may be a challenge for you as a leader. Recruiting team members may take some time. The more information you can provide, the better prepared they will be to function in their new role immediately, and the more confident they will appear to the church. Be prepared to explain their role, including how they will interact with other positions in the church to support the worship team and ensure the safety of those present. Healthcare professionals who respond to emergencies tend to function independently and possess a high level of self-assurance. Some of the people who reach out to assist you will think only of applying band-aids during VBS, while others will envision the mass shooting of 26 church members in 2017. Your job will involve bringing all these visions together, as both visions are potentially accurate for a church medical team.
Preparing
Training and orientation are crucial when bringing a group together from diverse backgrounds to create a new team. Each person comes with different skills and approaches a crisis in their unique way, based on prior experience or exposure to events. As the designated leader, you face the challenge of bringing the group together to function as a unified team. Unfortunately, volunteer groups often fail to succeed because leaders are reluctant to ask volunteers to commit or impose specific requirements for the role. Working with volunteers can make your job very challenging, which is why you will need to be particularly effective in communicating clearly and consistently with everyone. If any of them feel left out or unappreciated, you risk losing them.
Consistent Communication Is Essential
A good way to help with that dilemma is to use a handbook that contains all the essential information they need. Word of mouth, email, and text messages are unreliable. Not everyone has good cell and internet service. Paper is old-fashioned, but a copy can be maintained in the office as a consistent location and reproduced as often as needed.
Introduction to the Church
In the same way that you need an introduction to leadership, the church needs an introduction to your team. Create a type of team announcement that clearly defines its purpose and provides instructions on how to contact the team.
- Explain that the team’s purpose is to provide medical assistance to anyone who needs urgent care while at church.
- They can be recognized by:
- They are located at:
- If you can’t find them, contact x for assistance.
Orientation
Orient the team using the handbook that covers the basics. Provide them with a copy of the handbook to keep and another to read during orientation. Never ask a co-team member to orient another. If you do, misinformation, passed off as fact, may mistakenly circulate. Using a handbook with Standard Operating Procedures that everyone can reference prevents inconsistency in the information distributed. It does not, however, avoid inconsistency. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid inconsistencies from developing is to bring them to the team member’s attention as they occur.
