Emergency Squad Volunteers : Professionalism in Unpaid Work

In these days of budget cuts, volunteers are becoming more and more important in the effective continuation of local services.

The authors of Emergency Squad Volunteers analyze New Jersey medical squad volunteers in terms of the degree of professionalism and job satisfaction manifested by their members.

They also demonstrate how these qualities relate both to the structure of the group and the volunteers' individual makeup.

In assessing these groups they find four basic organization types: Highly Structured, Community, Struggling, and Authoritarian.

Within the groups professionalism varies little according to group structures but rather along lines of individual socioeconomic status of paid work and the degree of professionalism demonstrated in volunteer work.

Gora and Nemerowicz then translate their findings into policy recommendations which will increase recruitment, retention, professionalism and satisfaction.