Volunteerism Thrives in O&#038;P

Ask volunteers to recall one of their most memorable experiences, and they’ll likely find it hard to name just one. “It’s tough because there are so many,” says Mark Holowka, MSPO, CPO/L, FAAOP(D). For Holowka, one of his most eye-opening experiences came during the Iraq War in the early 2000s. He was working with a nongovernmental agency that had coordinated with the United States military to bring a five-year-old Iraqi boy, who had survived a landmine blast, to the US for prosthetic care. During the boy’s rehabilitation, Holowka says, they were walking through a public area where a muscle car was parked while on display. Holowka remembers that the boy pointed at the car, laughed, and said something to his interpreter. “I asked the interpreter what he said, and he responded, ‘Usually when a car is on display, it is used to educate people on how to recognize and avoid snipers shooting out of the trunk.’” That was not what Holowka was expecting, and it taught him something about other people’s experiences that he wouldn’t have known otherwise. “It simply blew my mind that a five-year-old boy’s reality could be so violent and complex that he would be conditioned to react to a car in that manner and speak about it in such a casual way,” he says. Why Volunteer? There are many reasons why people volunteer. A recent informal poll on The O&P EDGE’s social media sites says those in O&P who volunteer do so for many reasons—as a way of making new friends, improving their physical and emotional well-being, and having a positive learning experience. Overwhelmingly, though, those who responded to the poll said they volunteer to give back. While the increased documentation, lagging reimbursement, and increasing patient loads put pressure on today’s O&P professionals, it is seemingly safe to say that a converse underlying theme runs through much of the profession—a spirit of volunteerism and humanitarian activities. We spoke to students and residents, as well as experienced clinicians, about the variety of ways they are not only giving back locally, nationally, and internationally, but how those endeavors have helped to enrich their understanding personally and professionally. Holowka is a supervisor at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in the O&P department and president-elect of the American Academy of Orthotics and Prosthetics. Though his volunteer work is currently centered around his elected position on the board, he has volunteered for years on medical missions in Ecuador, El Salvador, and the Caribbean. “The desire to volunteer and to help others is instinctual,” he says. “We are born with a strong sense of compassion.” Most people want to participate in a variety of communities, Holowka says. “We aren’t solitary creatures. Whether that community is centered around your work, your faith, or where you live, we all want our communities to grow and thrive.” Volunteering within a community provides a natural sense of accomplishment, he says. “While it helps those who often are unable to help themselves, it also provides you with a strong sense of pride and identity and you become more self-aware.” Mitchell Dobson, CPO, FAAOP, is president-elect of the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association and the senior vice president and chief compliance officer for Hanger. He has been volunteering for more than a quarter century and well remembers his first volunteer event in the mid-1990s when he worked at a phone bank for a telethon, answering phones and taking pledges for United Cerebral Palsy. Dobson says volunteer work is important because many nonprofits can’t always afford to pay for staff to help accomplish their mission. “And when they have to pay for services, it consumes resources that could otherwise be used for research or the provision of care,” he says. “Volunteers allow nonprofits to keep the financial focus on the organization’s mission.” Rebecca Bergeson is a first-year MSOP student attending Concordia University, St. Paul; she is also enrolled at Century College. She says she fell in love with O&P after getting her hands dirty in plaster molds and fabrication. Bergeson says her first encounter as a volunteer in O&P came with Wiggle Your Toes, at the nonprofit organization’s Kid’s Day Mobility Clinic. “I got to play with the kids during soccer and agility drills. They wore me out, but I couldn’t help but smile the entire time seeing how excited they were to participate,” she says. Bergeson says volunteering “puts the emphasis on providing the greatest gift I can give to my community, my time and attention. It gives me the ability to connect with others in realizing we all come from somewhere and have a story to tell. It helps me to grow personally when we can all learn from each other.” Taffy Bowman, CPO, FAAOP, is the Eastern Pennsylvania regional manager/residency director for Ability Ottobock.care. Bowman, who volunteered with Habitat for Humanity while in college, says she doesn’t remember ever making a conscious decision to become a volunteer. “It was a value instilled in me at a young age,” she says. “And it has always resonated with me to stay involved with volunteer work in one form or another. It’s always been a way to practice having an others-focused mindset and keeps me from being too inwardly focused.” When a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, Bowman volunteered to serve at a prosthetic clinic with Mission of Hope in the Caribbean country. She says it was “life-changing to be able to serve the limb-loss community there, making and fitting prosthetics for those affected by the earthquake.” Bowman says she developed a deep affection for the Haitian people through that experience and has remained actively involved in various volunteer opportunities connected to Haiti. It was his parents who instilled a volunteering mindset for Duffy Felmlee, MSPO, CPO, FAAOP, whose first job was volunteering at an animal shelter when he was ten years old. Felmlee, who has done significant volunteer work in his pursuit of the Fellow of Academy with Distinction credential, has also volunteered domestically with Combat Wounded Veterans Challenge and Camp No Limits, among others. Internationally, he has been a volunteer with Dreaming and Working Together in Peru and the Limb Kind Foundation in the Philippines and Kenya, where he was most recently. “When an individual is able to apply themselves to a task for which there may not be a long-term relationship generated or payment provided, it is one of the [sincerest] forms of altruism,” says Felmlee, who is an associate professor and associate program director at the University of Hartford in the rehabilitation sciences department. The Challenging Side Our experts would agree that, while rewarding, there are often challenges associated with volunteering, where difficult and trying experiences can test their resolve. “Some of the international trips are met with such a high volume of individuals seeking treatment that eventually the team is not able to see everyone,” Felmlee says. “It is difficult to hear a story that someone has traveled a great distance, and at a personal cost, and the decision is made that they are not able to be added to the roster.” It is critical to make these types of choices though, Felmlee says, as they are an element of significant thought and are made with humility. It is also common for a solution to be designed to help offset the adverse effect. For example, Felmlee says that if the US-based teams can’t see a patient at that time, “we will leave componentry on-site earmarked for that patient to be seen with the local practitioners.” While volunteering at a prosthetic clinic in Haiti, Bowman and the medical team she was with were faced with a mass casualty situation when a deadly motor vehicle accident happened near their clinic. “Part of me thought, ‘I am not equipped to deal with this,’ and another part of me thought, ‘This is not what I signed up for,’” she says. Ultimately, Bowman says, that traumatic event was most likely the strongest catalyst for her. “It has continued to keep my heart strings and commitment attached to the Haitian people to this day,” she says. Even political hype can play a part in already-challenging situations. When Holowka was on a medical mission in El Salvador, he and other volunteers were asked to take team pictures with a group of businessmen for the local newspaper. When they saw the write-up the following day, Holowka says, they were surprised to see an inflated story about the team’s medical work. “We asked a number of people why the description of our work was so exaggerated, and we were told that the local politicians were using our work as a political tool to show the local people that they were fulfilling campaign promises and elevating the healthcare system.” The newspaper didn’t change the volunteer group’s mission, Holowka says, but “it was extremely difficult to recognize that our mission could be used as propaganda.” Learning From Others Our experts also recalled times when they were impacted by someone who was also volunteering on the same mission. Holowka remembers meeting the cofounder of Nuevo Mundo, Pat McTeague, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in the late 1990s. McTeague and her partner’s goal was to build a high school that would be in such high demand (“A Field of Dreams concept—if you will build it, they will come,” Holowka says) that they could ultimately invest the proceeds from tuition into providing free education to those in need. “I was in awe that both Pat and her cofounder, who were females, were able to accomplish such an amazing task in such a male-dominated culture in the 90s,” he says. Bowman was a volunteer in Haiti when she had the chance to serve alongside “a gifted surgical nurse from the US who had intense demands on her schedule.” Despite the nurse’s hectic agenda, she participated in nursing volunteer work every year in some substantial way, Bowman says. “Her commitment and lifestyle of prioritizing volunteer work, despite her busy schedule, was impactful for me.” One of Felmlee’s most memorable experiences came in April when he met with a volunteer team of students, clinicians, therapists, media, and peer mentors in Nairobi, Kenya, to serve a pediatric population with limb loss. The Limb Kind Foundation had brought a diversity of skill and passion, which became a perpetual motion machine of positive reinforcement, Felmlee says. The mentors shared their personal experiences of challenges and successes to the children who have been publicly stigmatized for their physical appearance, Felmlee says. “Seeing the impact of these candid discussions motivated myself and others to be vigilant in our treatment plan, intervention solution, and functional outcomes so that our prostheses and time we shared working together could be an aspect of helping that child reach the potential that the peer mentors helped to bring to light,” he says. Dobson says he is constantly inspired by his colleagues who also volunteer. “It keeps me going, especially when you experience a failure of some sort,” he says. “Within the O&P community, I am consistently amazed at the talent and effort from my peers and their desire to better the profession and the patients we serve.” Is There a Downside? Volunteering is not always easy and there can be an occasional downside, our volunteers agree. First, there has to be a balance, Bowman says. “Like anything in life, it needs to be kept in balance,” she says. “I’ve experienced seasons of volunteer work that have become consuming and rarely are those types of efforts sustainable.” Dobson agrees. “The hardest thing is knowing how to maintain balance with other aspects of life, including my own career,” he says. “I can get overwhelmed with too many commitments if I’m not careful.” It’s important to understand the goals of any mission or project, Holowka says. “Many projects can have unintended consequences or put strains on economies or industries and local workers, so it’s important to understand the effects of what you’re planning to do.” He gives the example of when providing care or a service, one should consider the short- and long-term ramifications if that care were to stop or the funding dries up. “It is wise to consider sustainability and environmental aspects as well,” he says. Bergeson says that “a potential downside, coincidentally, [is] the connection factor in that once you’ve established friendships, if anything happens to someone, everyone feels the emotional toll and the heavy cloud of empathy. Those times can make you feel down and upset but also motivates everyone to continue providing additional support to those in need.” The Health Aspects The benefits of volunteering far outweigh the negative, and our experts say there are numerous health benefits to giving of one’s time and effort. “Without a doubt,” Holowka agrees. “Not only do I recognize the mental health benefits of improved self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth, but I also think those benefits result in an improved physical health. There is an energy associated to those things that bring you joy.” “I have observed myself reaping mental, spiritual, and physical benefits at various times in my life from my volunteer efforts,” Bowman says. The mental health improvements of being able to share in a common mission with like-minded individuals that helps to build a sense of community is significant, Felmlee says. “Contrary to some very visible lines of dialogue, political differences, spiritual convictions, economic status, and other potentially polarizing topics can become marginalized as the reality of improving the quality of life for others can be accomplished through a unified effort from those who volunteer.” No question there are health benefits to volunteering, Bergeson believes. “The feeling of helping others and involving yourself in the community does wonders for mental health in that you are socializing and creating friendships,” she says. “Plus, if you get to work with kids, you’re going to be running around to get oxygen in your lungs and your heart pounding from exercise.” Being a volunteer is primarily about being there to help others in need whether it’s from a personal or professional standpoint, Bergeson says. “Volunteering is truly supporting everyone you meet in some way because you’ll never know when you yourself might be that someone in need.” Betta Ferrendelli can be contacted at betta@opedge.com . All images: rawpixel.com/stock.adobe.com

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