After I retired from the National Guard I joined the Medical Reserve Corp (MRC) in Arizona. When the COVID epidemic/pandemic started the MRC asked for volunteers to staff the COVID emergency hotline for our county in Arizona (Yavapai). As a psychiatric nurse I did not know any more about COVID than the average citizen (most medical professionals knew very little also) but I said yes wanting to help in the emergency. My wife, Gitte, also a nurse (RN) volunteered to help. Calls were routed to our cell phones at home. Public Health sent a resource book about testing, policies and disease information. We took the calls for several weeks, giving information about COVID and testing. After a few weeks, Public Health decided to reopen and wanted us to come to the office to volunteer, a one hour drive that sounded more like a job than volunteer work so then we stopped our staffing of the COVID hotline.

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COVID also closed the hospitals to nursing students. I used creativity to get clinical experiences for my students:

Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff
KJZZ (Public Radio in Phoenix, Arizona)

A year ago, nursing faculty at Northern Arizona University had to hustle to get students clinical placements — a requirement of the nursing program. But COVID-19 had shut everything down. So, the students started working with older adults over the phone to complete the program.

Guy Lamunyon is an adjunct faculty member with NAU’s nursing department who focuses on psychiatric nursing.

"But COVID stood the world of nursing education on its head. We had no experience." he said. "We always had clinical placements, having our clinical placements jerked out from under us was very new and we had to be very creative and come up with alternatives."

So, he contacted the Verde Valley Caregivers Coalition. They needed help conducting a survey on patient wellness and readiness for telemedicine among their homebound seniors.

Lamunyon said the experience exposed his students to working with the older population, while counting as a form of talk therapy.

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When the COVID vaccine became available, I assisted Dr Bruce Peek ( retired cardiologist) to develop a program to administer vaccines to seniors and shut-ins at home (see article below). Then I trained volunteer retired nurses from our Northern Arizona Retired Nurses group (www.retirednursesnorthernarizona.com) to give in home vaccinations (see article at bottom).

The Verde Independent (newspaper)

Verde Valley Caregivers Coalition vaccinates homebound
By Scott Shumaker -March 13, 2021

Eva, a Sedona resident, was among the first people to receive an in-home vaccination from Verde Valley Caregivers Coalition, in partnership with Spectrum Healthcare. Dr. Bruce Peek, a VVCC board member, administers the vaccine (swe photo).

Dr. Bruce Peek, a cardiologist who serves on the board of Verde Valley Caregivers Coalition, said he started thinking about how to vaccinate homebound older adults as soon as health officials began discussing the possibility of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The nonprofit serves about 2,200 older adults in the Verde Valley with essential transportation, home safety checks, shop­ping assistance and other help.

Peek knew that some of the people VVCC serves would have difficulty navigating even the most well-organized vaccination system, since many don’t own computers or would have difficulty traveling to vaccination sites.

On March 1, many months of planning by the nonprofit came to fruition as a mobile team from VVCC, working in partnership with Spectrum Healthcare, administered the valley’s first 12 in-home COVID vaccinations. Peek said it’s one of the first rural mobile vaccination programs in the country that he’s aware of.

The mobile vaccination team carried vials of the Moderna vaccine in a small drink cooler with cold packs on the bottom. Peek said Moderna’s vaccine is well-suited for mobile vaccina­tions, since it requires only regular refrigeration, and the doses are good for up to six hours after the vial is pierced.

VVCC has three vacci­nation teams trained, and it will be administering vaccines four days a week.

Peek said the group plans to train up to eight vaccina­tion teams and administer vaccines five days a week. If the group can administer 40 vaccines a day, Peek said, all of the homebound adults in the Verde Valley could be vaccinated by mid-summer, contingent on access to vaccine doses.

Spectrum Healthcare in Cottonwood is supplying VVCC with the vaccine and supplies and is registering the individuals receiving the vaccines.

Peek said access to the vaccine was the biggest hurdle the group faced in setting up the mobile program.

“Even getting 15 to 20 doses [per day] was very hard to get hold of,” he said, but vaccine availability has improved.

Putting together teams of qualified individuals was another challenge, since each team needs a licensed medical provider and someone to handle the documentation involved. According to Peek, many retired nurses have stepped up to fill the need.

“There’s been a tremendous response to volunteerism in the Verde Valley,” he said.

Peek said that if anyone knows of a homebound adult in the Verde Valley who needs an in-home vaccination, they should contact VVCC at 204-1238. “You don’t have to be a client of VVCC” to receive a mobile vaccine, Peek said.

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PHOTO: Guy and Gitte Lamunyon admiinstering COVID vaccine

NAU Newsletter (Northern Arizona University)
MARCH 30, 2021

NAU nursing instructor part of program to bring COVID-19 vaccines to Arizona’s homebound seniors

NAU nursing instructor Guy Lamunyon is part of a pilot program aimed at bringing COVID-19 vaccines to where people are—and in a pandemic, that means their living rooms.

Lamunyon is working with the Northern Arizona Retired Nurses in Action to staff this community project to get the vaccine to seniors and Arizona residents who are home-bound and cannot get to large vaccination centers. It’s a model program for the state being led by the nonprofit Verde Valley Caregivers Coalition (VVCC), the only one of its kind in the state, and one in which he hopes to involve NAU nursing students next fall.

Lamunyon worked with Dr. Bruce Peek, a retired doctor in the Verde Valley, along with the VVCC to recruit and train other retired health care providers. They then work with Spectrum to provide the vaccine and do the necessary paperwork. Providers pick up the vaccine supplies in the morning, get their schedule and go to each home; at each place, they fill out the paperwork, administer the vaccine and then wait the 15-30 minutes required to ensure the person doesn’t have a reaction. They average 12-15 visits a day, Lamunyon said, and have administered more than 300 vaccines thus far.

The VVCC already has a process in place to reach out to people and schedule appointments for tasks like doctor’s visits, shopping trips and help around the house, so they used the same process to schedule vaccine appointments.

For Lamunyon, a twice-retired psychiatric nurse who can’t seem to make retirement stick, this is one of the best ways he and other health care providers can support their community right now.

“They have some challenges because they’re elderly, they’re in the highest-risk group, and if a delivery person or family member brings COVID to them, that’s it,” he said. “This group is the most vulnerable, and the highest number of casualties is in this octogenarian group.”

This project has implications for NAU nursing students as well. A year ago, nursing faculty had to scramble to make sure their students could still get clinical placements. When the accelerated nursing program started in the summer, Lamunyon connected with VVCC, which was using retired nurses to conduct a survey on patient wellness and readiness for telemedicine among high-risk homebound Verde Valley residents. Lamunyon understood the importance of continued caregiving and connection with these patients.

So, the nursing students partnered with retired nurses to make these calls, getting the kind of health care experience that is becoming increasingly common in a world where increased telemedicine is likely to continue. In the fall, Lamunyon is anticipating using nursing students to make these rounds as well; that will require collaboration with NAU instructors in public and community health as well.

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu