VA seeks volunteer help for veterans through My Life, My Story project

The John J. Pershing VA Medical Center is looking for volunteers to help with the My Life, My Story program.

The program is designed to help doctors and nurses get to know veteran patients’ experiences, without having to ask about it, by reading stories in the patient’s chart.

Through this, the volunteers sit down with willing veterans to interview them about their lives, both during and outside of their service. The interview will then be typed up and written into a story. The veteran is able to receive as many copies of the story as they’d like to keep or give to family. Volunteers would also then write a condensed version of the story, which gets added to the veteran’s medical file after the veteran reviews it.

“That’s so providers, doctors, nurses and such can read it and learn about this patient of their’s, other than just ‘what’s wrong with you today’ kind of a thing,” J. Dale Garrett, volunteer service chief, said. “They don’t have to retell their story all the time. New nurses, new doctors can read it without having to rehash everything (with the patient).”

Garrett said there’s currently nine people trained to do the interviews and stories, but only two are not VA employees. However, he’s working with local schools to get high schoolers to participate as volunteers and do a couple stories during the year or semester. He said it comes down to whatever the schools are willing to partner with the VA to get done. Garrett said he’s also having conversations about the program with a speech teacher at Three Rivers College about getting those students involved as well.

Garrett said the goal of the program is to help provide better health care to the participating veterans through providing doctors and nurses with the written stories. That way, he said, the veteran doesn’t have to provide that information every time they see a new doctor or is assigned a new nurse.

Interview topics include childhood, schooling, military experience, work experience, family and other support, medical concerns, interests and anything else the veteran wants to discuss or share with their medical team. However, if the veteran doesn’t want to discuss something then they aren’t expected to.

According to information on the project, the interviews usually last about an hour, depending on how much information the veteran wants to share.

Those interested in volunteering for the program can email the VA at VHAPOPVolunteer-W@va.gov or call at 573-778-4276.