Challenges and Recommendations for Health Volunteer Programs

This essay examines the health volunteer program, highlighting its significance in realizing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and aiding nurses' transition from college to professional practice. It identifies inadequate resources and a lack of experienced supervisors as key challenges hindering the effectiveness of these programs. The essay recommends increased resource allocation and the hiring of qualified supervisors to support healthcare providers. Ultimately, it emphasizes the importance of addressing these challenges to ensure the sustainable success of volunteer programs and their contribution to both national goals and the professional development of nurses. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

Running Head: HEALTH VOLUNTEER PROGRAM
Health Volunteer Program
Students Name
University Affiliation
Date

HEALTH VOLUNTEER PROGRAM 2
Health volunteer program
Introduction
The first question that should come on the mind of healthcare providers is; why do they
volunteer? A health volunteer is considered as a person who works for a given community or for
enhancement of the environment, basically since they choose to perform or do so. Hospital or
health volunteering is an age-old tradition with healthcare centers having a longstanding practice
of applying a mixed labor force of volunteer as well as paid labor (Geletko et al, 2009).
Currently, many hospitals and healthcare organizations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are
hiring volunteers to offer enhanced support and professional services, fund raising and even
governance. It is key to note that with increase in utilization and scope of volunteerism, most
healthcare organizations have resorted to hiring expert and professional administrators with the
mandate to manage volunteers perfectly and efficiently.
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Hajj Ministry has come with a program dubbed ‘be
helpful’ which is helping young people, especially healthcare providers to serve the pilgrims.
The aim of the program or initiative is to assign youths to various locations and regions based on
their experience as well as skills, and is part of the country’s vision 2030 plan which encourages
the youth in many volunteer programs. Even though these healthcare volunteer programs have
many opportunities that can help the professional career of nurses, most of the nurses face
various challenges when discharging their duties (Howard, 2013).

HEALTH VOLUNTEER PROGRAM 3
Challenges facing health volunteer program
There is inadequate or lack of resources for the healthcare volunteer projects. This makes
it hard of the healthcare providers to effectively deliver their work (Rogers, Rogers and Boyd,
2013).
Most of the projects do not have adequate supervisors who can guide healthcare
providers especially those who are making transition from the college life to registered
healthcare providers.
Recommendations
More resources should be allocated to the healthcare volunteer programs as well as more
qualified and experienced supervisors should be hired to help these healthcare providers.
Conclusion
Volunteer programs are important for the realization of the vision 2030 plan as well as
helping nurses to effectively transition from college life to registered nurses. Thus, the
challenges affecting these programs should be sustainably be reduced.

HEALTH VOLUNTEER PROGRAM 4
References
Geletko, K., W, Beitsch, L., M, Lundberg, M & Brooks, R., G 2009, ‘Reducing the Impact of the
Health Care Access Crisis Through Volunteerism: A Means, Not an End’, American
Journal of Public Health, vol. 99, no. 7, pp. 1166–1169,
Howard, K 2013, ‘Integrating Employee Volunteer Programs and Wellness: Healthy
Communities and Employees’, Benefits Magazine, 50(12), pp. 26–30.
Rogers, S., Rogers, S. M. and Boyd, K 2013, Challenges And Opportunities In Healthcare
Volunteer Management: Insights From Volunteer Administrator.
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