Yogyakarta, October 9th 2020 – Organization of Humanity of FISIPOL UGM came back with another OH Online Edition of Visitation on Friday night (9/10). This Online Visitation via Google Meet raised the topic “The Story of COVID-19 Volunteers: Fighting for Humanity”. Sherry Anastasya (Nutritional Science of Faculty of Public Health of University of Indonesia 2017). a COVID-19 volunteer at Wisma Atlet, became the speaker this time. The event lasted from 07.00 p.m. to 08.30 p.m and was moderated by Felice, a student of Communication Science class 2019.
As an introduction, Sherry shared a story about her experience as a volunteer at the Athlete’s House for two months, namely in June and late August. She admitted that the reason for being a COVID-19 volunteer was because there was an opportunity at that time and with her background who studied in the health sector, Sherry could learn and know the ins and outs of hospitals.He talked about the condition of the medical personnel when they had to wear PPE while on duty, the fairly complex decontamination process, to the response of people when they were tested for swabs.
Sherry herself is a non-medical volunteer in the admin swab and decontamination department. In the admin swab, Sherry is the administrator of the swab test. She manages patient data collection, from registration, queuing calls, writing patient data labels, tube numbering, inputting data to computers, to submitting reports to superiors. Meanwhile, when in the decontamination section, she was in charge of processing or managing PPE or infectious waste from medical personnel after entering the patient tower. She said that the decontamination process was not just removing PPE and then discarding it, but it had to go through a process of spraying it with a special liquid, then rinsing it with water.
In this case, volunteers are tasked with supervising that the decontamination process is carried out properly so that it does not happen if the virus is attached. In addition, she was also in charge of cleaning PPE equipment such as boots, face shields, and others before being used by health workers. Sherry admitted that this job was quite time-consuming, because she also had to study as well. “It was a little bit long, especially for those who were in the decontamination because the working hours were 8 hours, meanwhile in the admin swab at least the working hours were only 4 hours,” Sherry said. Sherry mentioned that the non-medical department apart from decontamination and swab admin, there were also logistics, porters, secretariat admin, reviewing bodies, nursing assistants, IT and MCU. Furthermore, Sherry talked about the joys and sorrows of becoming a volunteer at Wisma Atlet. She admitted that it was hard to manage the time between volunteering and studying. Plus, when she had to do a community internship which is an obligation of the six and seventh semester students, but fortunately it was an online internship. “The most difficult time management was in there, but thankfully everything has passed and it seems like there is no collaboration either,” Sherry said.
However, Sherry admitted that she got more joys than sorrows because the experience was considered very worth it. She met friends who were both from swab admin and decontamination. Kinship Was felt because of mutual care. She felt more open because she can mingle with people of different backgrounds. “Meeting all kinds of people with different educational and economic backgrounds is really fun because I really mingle with the community, so far I only have activities on campus, so I feel very open,” Sherry said.
With support from family and friends, Sherry experienced less psychological problems while volunteering. Meanwhile, the biggest challenge was during the break time because many activities made her sleep less, and she also could not sleep. In addition, another challenge was maintaining social relations with her friends so that she did not get called as antisocial while doing her responsibilities. Being a volunteer for Sherry is something very valuable because there will be memorable experiences that can be shared later. She advised not to be afraid to try volunteering because all difficulties will definitely have a solution, including time management. “You can focus on these two things at the time of day, when it comes to volunteers focus on volunteers, when it comes to study focus on study, everything can be done, you can do it!” Sherry said.