By Rick Padden, American Red Cross Public Affairs
Name: Fran Culler
Location: Loveland
GAP: DHS/Disaster Health Services
Length of service: 3 years
Deployments: 1
One of Fran Culler’s goals when she retired was to become a volunteer, but she’s had this little problem of “un-retiring,” over and over.
A registered nurse with a half-century of experience, Culler trained in Alexandria, VA, and worked in New Jersey, New York, Illinois (Chicago) and Ohio before retiring and moving to Loveland, CO 12 years ago. Un-retiring, she then took on the task of lead nurse manager at the newly founded Medical Center of the Rockies for six years, and then retired again. “But I love what I do,” she said, and has gone back to work, albeit part-time, as a risk manager and patient advocate for UC Health.
Not that she really had to wait to completely retire to volunteer.
“I’ve been a volunteer since I was a teenager,” she said. Remember children lining up at school, tongues out to receive pink-stained lumps of sugar infused with the oral polio vaccine? Culler was there, helping with distribution. She’s also volunteered for several political campaigns, and still offers her services twice a week at the free, all-volunteer St. Mathew’s Medical Clinic in Loveland. But it’s the American Red Cross she’s always had her eye on, and three years ago was finally able to immerse herself in its training programs.
“It’s just a perfect match for me,” she said. “It’s just got such a huge, good reputation, and I’ve always been a Clara Barton fan. It has been a very welcoming group and they’ve been very supportive as I’ve gone through the training necessary for me to become an active health services worker.” Culler said the number one thing nurse volunteers do is take on-call work. “We do a 24-hour shift about six days a month, primarily dealing with house fire calls, but we also make ourselves available nationally for disaster deployment.”
Her husband of 48 years, John, is also retired but still very active with their HOA, the Masons and their church, and so going off on deployments is not an issue in their household. Culler traveled to Wilmington, NC last year to assist with shelter operations after Hurricane Florence made landfall, and found her team faced with helping over 500 clients. “I could tell they were getting desperate for nurses. After getting an email, I’d literally just clicked on the page to show my availability, and my phone rang.
“The fun thing about it is, you don’t know what you’re going to do, and it was my first deployment. I’m going to do whatever I have to do, but I can triage with my eyes closed, so I triaged this huge high school shelter – screening people as they came in.” Culler said that in addition to discovering physical medical needs, Red Cross nurses need to be prepared to spot mental health needs and make referrals. “I’ve learned to recognize severe states of grief, even on the phone,” she said.
The first night she was in a VFW facility; the second night she was in a big community center; and the third night she transferred to a shared hotel room. “We took shifts, so we could cover the shelter needs 24/7,” she said. After three days of working with Hurricane Florence clients, however, the cavalry arrived and National Guard nurses helped set up a clinic, providing tetanus shots, doing stitches, etc. Culler said Red Cross nurses don’t normally provide acute medical care.
“I’ve made a lot of friends in the Red Cross,” she said, “and gotten exposure to everything from shelter work to supplies and food.” Donations come in from every direction, she said, and can be difficult to manage. She said she likes the idea of not knowing what she’s going to be asked to do on a deployment. She noted that it took her a good six months to train for her position, despite all her professional experience. “Procedural training, especially in safety, is part of why the Red Cross has been so successful all these years. It’s my favorite. It gives me a chance to know what’s going on in the community, as well. And the Red Cross is the best value when it comes to dollars-donated, because it’s so well managed.”