# The Healing Volunteers

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-valley-today-1144037/the-healing-volunteers
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-valley-today-1144037/the-healing-volunteers.md
Podcast: [The Valley Today](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-valley-today-1144037)
Published: 2026-07-08T15:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://thevalleytodaypodcast.com/the-healing-volunteers
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thevalleytoday/20260708VT.mp3?dest-id=2999852
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-valley-today-1144037/episodes/the-healing-volunteers
Duration seconds: 1482

## Resource

Twenty-plus deployments across the country. Coast to coast. And this month, Elizabeth Quinn was on standby to fly to Guam via Hawaii for a Category 5 typhoon response. On this episode of The Valley Today, host Janet Michael continues her year-long Red Cross series with Deb Fleming, Executive Director of the Greater Shenandoah Valley Chapter, joined by Elizabeth Quinn — the Disaster Health Services Lead and a retired nurse who leads the volunteer nursing team responsible for the health side of every Red Cross disaster response, from home fires down the street to hurricanes across the country. Elizabeth walks through what the nursing deployment actually looks like: contact within 24 hours of a disaster to help families replace prescriptions, glasses, dentures, hearing aids, CPAPs and BiPAPs, and other health essentials the survivors probably haven't even started to think about yet. She explains the community-based model (RN-led, with physicians serving under nurse supervision — Elizabeth's favorite perk), the streamlined 8.5-hour training (down from 20), and the game-changing option most new nurse volunteers don't know exists: virtual deployments , where a nurse anywhere in the country can serve disaster survivors from their kitchen table for a scheduled shift. Plus a genuinely powerful story from a Mississippi shelter, where a nurse stayed two hours after her shift to help a gentleman who couldn't read reconnect with over $6,000 in back benefits he'd already earned. Deb closes with a national update — home fires, a hydrochloric acid train spill, flooding in Minnesota and Michigan, the Guam typhoon, blood donation shortages, and FIFA World Cup event support — and teases next month's guest: Dave, the volunteer who maintains Red Cross buildings across multiple regions (ass…

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## Transcript

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