{"id":39342,"date":"2018-09-20T09:42:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T13:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/?p=39342"},"modified":"2020-09-25T12:52:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:52:00","slug":"from-car-collision-to-outstanding-volunteer-patient-travels-long-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/healthy-tomorrows\/from-car-collision-to-outstanding-volunteer-patient-travels-long-road\/","title":{"rendered":"From car collision to Outstanding Volunteer: patient travels long road"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erin Murphy, who won the Outstanding Volunteer award, shared his experiences and talked about the importance of the Volunteer Assignment Descriptions and Checklists project.<\/em><\/p>\n

Winners never quit \u2013 rather, they find ways to adjust to a new lifestyle, to a new normal.<\/p>\n

Erin Murphy, who won The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Excellence<\/a> Award<\/a> for Outstanding Volunteer this year, has done just that since a collision left him with catastrophic injuries. While stopped at a red light, his car was hit from behind, squishing him between two cars. His long journey towards his new normal began.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never imagined that from a 2010 car accident, a brain injury, five years of rehab that included a couple stints as a Rehab outpatient that I would land a rehab volunteer role and become a valuable member of the hospital\u2019s team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Ottawa Hospital has helped Erin rebuild his life \u2013 first with medical care and then as a volunteer, enhancing patient care for others.<\/p>\n

Due to his severe brain injury, Erin experiences headaches; balance and coordination issues; fatigue; sleep disturbances; sensitivity to light, noise, and movement; tinnitus and disorientation. He didn\u2019t have long stays in the hospital, but he nevertheless spent a lot of time as an outpatient at all three hospital campuses.<\/p>\n

In summer 2015, Erin started volunteering. He could work only a few hours once a week in specialized conditions. But his work in the vocational rehabilitation placement allowed him to contribute to a business environment and help conquer his cognitive limitations. Volunteering helped fill these voids, providing a routine to help establish \u2018a new normal.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cMy accident was life-altering,\u201d said Erin. \u201cIn addition to many cognitive and physical losses, it took away my routines, my career, my peers. I missed being part of a team to contribute and work with a purpose. Volunteering helped me re-establish all of this. It wasn\u2019t about me, but I was contributing to a higher good for the community. Volunteering at The Ottawa Hospital has impacted many aspects of my life and helped make this \u2018new normal\u2019 full and whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ottawa Hospital relies on about 1,100 volunteers to enhance patient care and help fulfill the hospital\u2019s vision, mission, and values. But volunteers must be kept safe in their work \u2013 the same as for employees. If proper controls are not in place, volunteers may unknowingly be exposed to health and safety hazards such as viruses, bacteria, chemicals, radiation, falls and slips, and physical or verbal assault.<\/p>\n

Erin worked with the Volunteer Assignment Descriptions and Checklists project, which was designed to improve safety protocols and clarify the \u201cdo\u2019s\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019ts\u201d for each volunteer role at all three campuses. Upon finishing his training with the Ontario Labour Ministry, Erin assessed more than 30 volunteer roles against 10-to-12 criteria per role to identify any unsafe elements. Then, he produced safe work procedure documents, which resulted in some of the tasks, duties and responsibilities being changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cErin has grown and thrived and helped us with strategic planning,\u201d said Sherri Daly, Manager of Volunteer Resources. \u201cHe has taken the lead on our Prescreening team to help design our processes and metrics, and much more. He is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his many volunteering contributions and his diligence in keeping volunteers safe from potential hazards, he was named the Outstanding Volunteer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winners never quit \u2013 rather, they find ways to adjust to a new lifestyle, to a new normal. Erin Murphy, who won The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Excellence Award for Outstanding Volunteer this year, has done just that since a collision left him with catastrophic injuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":39344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[167,171,407,184],"class_list":["post-39342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthy-tomorrows","tag-awards","tag-rehabilitation","tag-trauma-care","tag-volunteers"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}