ORIGINAL PAPERS Family Medicine & Primary Care Review 2021; 23(2): 169–173 © Copyright by Wydawnictwo Contnuo Organizaton of volunteers in the healthcare system and the type of services provided by them during the COVID-19 pandemic Peygham heidarPoor 1, F , mahmood maniati 2, B , maria Cheraghi 3, A, D , ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6628-8786 maryam BeheshtinasaB 4, B, E , Poorandokht afshari 5, C–E ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3383-9908 1 Virtual School of Medical Educaton and Management, Shahid Behesht University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 2 School of Medicine, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran 3 Department of Social Dentstry and Oral Health, School of Dentstry, Social Determinant of Health Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran 4 School of Nursing and Midwifery, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran 5 Reproductve Health Promoton Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran A – Study Design, B – Data Collecton, C – Statstcal Analysis, D – Data Interpretaton, E – Manuscript Preparaton, F – Literature search, G – Funds Collecton Background. In the event of accidents and disasters, the presence of volunteers, if not organized, can sometmes worsen the situaton instead of improving it. Objectves. This research was aimed at the ways of organizing volunteers in the healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic in the southwest of Iran. Material and method. This questonnaire-based descriptve study was conducted on 140 volunteer health workers either actve in pro- viding services to COVID-19 patents or on the waitng list. The partcipants were selected using convenience sampling. They completed the informaton form, which was analyzed afer collecton using SPSS version 22. Results. The 140 volunteers’ mean age was 32.5 with a standard deviaton of 7.5. Of these volunteers, 62.1% had volunteered to serve since the frst days of the outbreak. According to the partcipants of this study, the management of volunteers was spontaneous under the supervision of the ofcial and state system, and the vast majority of them considered the ofcial healthcare system’s recepton of volunteers as positve but saw the bureaucracy as a major obstacle to recruitng volunteers, especially nursing and midwifery gradu- ates. Finally, the partcipants’ motve for volunteering was found to be a sense of personal responsibility and human duty. Conclusions. Proper planning, organizaton and management of volunteers in an epidemic situaton should be taken into account by healthcare ofcials in order to receive the highest efciency in tmes of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Key words: delivery of health care, volunteers, COVID-19, pandemics. Summary ISSN 1734-3402, eISSN 2449-8580 This is an Open Access artcle distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Internatonal (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). License (htp://creatvecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Heidarpoor P, Maniat M, Cheraghi M, Beheshtnasab M, Afshari P. Organizaton of volunteers in the healthcare system and the type of services provided by them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fam Med Prim Care Rev 2021; 23(2): 169–173, doi: https://doi.org/10.5114/ fmpcr.2021.105909. https://doi.org/10.5114/fmpcr.2021.105909 Background Several cases of pneumonia reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, now known as COVID-19 [1], caused a pandemic. Initally, a hospital in Washington state predicted that with the rising trend in the number of patents, there may not be enough ventlaton equipment. In Michigan, the hospital system warned that the increased number of pa- tents beyond hospital capacity could lead to only some patents selectvely being provided full services [2]. In Iran, this situaton has caused some medical universites to declare that they need the help of the public, especially professionals from medical and allied health sciences, nurses, operatng room and anesthesia technicians, etc., for beter performance, despite using all their power and capacity to solve this problem [3]. A closer look at the results of surveys around the world shows that if a natural disaster strikes a community, people feel the need to do some- thing to help those afected by the situaton. This is evidence of the dynamic attude in society towards a natural disaster [4]. During Hurricane Katrina in the United States, for example, the Red Cross alone recruited 50,000 volunteers. It is estmated that two million people helped during the 1985 Mexico City earth- quake, though most of them had litle informaton about the crisis, which can create challenges for relief services and recov- ery from a crisis [5]. The presence of local volunteers during an accident is partcularly important, because they are ofen the frst respondents and have the best chance of saving lives and providing protecton in the hours and days immediately afer a disaster [6]. The Internatonal Federaton of Red Cross and the Red Crescent Society defnes voluntary service as follows: “Volun- tary services are services that volunteers perform voluntarily and not because of any social, economic and politcal factors imposed on them, and the purpose of which is to provide ser- vices to the vulnerable people of the society and not to gain material benefts” [7]. Volunteers are divided into two general categories of employed volunteers and spontaneous volunteers [8]. Another type of volunteer is the digital volunteer, whose role has rapidly become important in critcal events [9]. These people use a variety of methods to provide informaton. Most studies suggest that this is done through Twiter services, but in