SB Clinics is looking for volunteers to help their COVID-19 vaccine rollout
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics is preparing to increase their COVID-19 vaccine rollout. And preparing to move from one vaccination date to five. And go from vaccinating 160 patients to more than 750.
SB Clinics needs help to increase their patient capacity. SB Clinic associate medical director, Dr. Susan Lawton, said the hardest part of the rollout is the administrative side. And they need help scheduling appointments and filing paperwork.
Thursday SB Clinics hosted their first evening clinic. It was also their first event using the one-dose Johnson and Johnson shot called the Janssen vaccine.
"The biggest slow down for us is the documentation afterward and unfortunately we need trained staff to do that and also people making phone calls to make appointments," said Dr. Lawton.
Taryn Ouellette is the vaccine coordinator for SB Clinics. She hopes to recruit 60 volunteers.
"We so far have been running with our own Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics staff," said Ouellette. "And so we're asking our own staff to volunteer, so in order to keep these clinics running we need to shift away from that so that our staff can focus on their normal positions."
Volunteers with a medical background could be asked to help with the vaccine process. While others will fill different roles.
"We're hoping to move to a full volunteer workforce going forward," said Ouellette. "For Saturday's event it's about 30 people, so that's volunteer vaccinators, volunteer people checking you in, checking out, guiding you through the clinic."
SB clinics currently has three events a week and plans to up that to five soon. To qualify volunteer applicants need a negative tuberculin skin test.
"And then we'll be able to go through a quick interview and see where you'll fit best at one of our events and then we can onboard you to start volunteering," said Ouellette.
To become a volunteer call 805-963-1174 or email Taryn.Ouellette@SBClinics.org.
