Dana Palmer, a nurse in UVA Health’s cardiac care unit, certainly had her hands full. After COVID-19 struck, Palmer’s unit was left shorthanded when University of Virginia student volunteers from Madison House – the independent, nonprofit volunteer center for UVA students – were no longer able to coordinate rounding, a task they had helped conduct since 2015 through the cardiac care unit’s Rounding With Heart program.

Palmer and her fellow nurses managed to keep things running until this past fall. That’s when she got the student volunteers back through a virtual version of the program she created with the help of UVA Health volunteer coordinator Maureen Oswald.

Palmer created a training video for UVA students Graham Quinn and Connie Jiang, who had volunteered previously. In turn, they recruited and trained other Madison House volunteers for the program. Quinn and Jiang coordinate round schedules virtually now, for both those in the hospital and for their fellow volunteers at home.

Read the rest of this UVA Today story here.