Hospital Volunteers In The Hospital Environment

Hospital volunteers come in all shapes and sizes. High school students, college students, retirees, stay at home moms, clowns and even the four-legged variety can all be found volunteering at a local hospital.

As a recent graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and a new Research Technician at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, becoming more familiar with different healthcare settings and helping others in doing so have always been of my interest. From my experience of volunteering as a piano teacher for inner-city children in Baltimore, I have learnt that even a small commitment and emotional support can make a big difference in the daily lives and the happiness of those in need. I have briefly familiarized myself to the hospital environment by shadowing physicians and conducting biomedical research but have yet to translate my volunteering experiences and the lessons learnt from them to the healthcare setting. I am a friendly, optimistic,

Growing up within a stable, loving environment, all the while enjoying good health with no major setbacks or difficulties, I have always considered myself fortunate. The value of respect, along with imparting a non-judgmental attitude toward people and situations, was emphasized daily by my parents.

Volunteering is often seen as free labor. However, there is a significant cost associated with the recruitment, training, and maintenance of the volunteer force. A full-time staff to oversee the volunteer program is necessary as well to ensure volunteers are being used effectively. The recruitment process varies from advertising to speaking at schools to

Being a volunteer at the UM Charles Regional Medical Center is a great way to give back your community and in a small way help society to become a better place. However, before you can become a full volunteer there are certain requirements that you will need to fulfil.

Cedars-Sinai is a place that offers a wide variety of opportunities to volunteer within health providing services. As a student that is driven to pursue a career in the health field in order to improve the service of patients, I am interested in aiding doctor, nurses, physician assistants, and more in providing the quality care that all patients should receive. Additionally, I am interested in participating in the amazing programs that Cedars-Sinai offers for students such the TCAB and the Pre-Healthcare Volunteer programs. If I have the opportunity to participate in these programs, I would ultimately be open to aid in a wide range of duties. I am fully committed to help, to volunteer, and to learn.

My nature to serve attracts me to the Houston Methodist Summer Teen Volunteer Program. My goals are to gain experience and knowledge about careers in medicine, and to give back to the community. I would like to learn a lot about how people live by the ways they get hurt or how they deal with being sick. It’s a good study of human behavior because you see people at their highest and lowest extremes of emotion. To further my goal of pursuing a career in medicine, it is important for me to get hands on experience of serving people and executing work in a responsible manner. When a person donates their time, they give hope to someone who needs it. I feel that I will be also benefited because I get to see how my contribution has made a difference.

Visiting a hospital and seeing what the children need or playing with them makes them very happy. Volunteering at a hospital lets me see the hospital from an insider's perspective. I am considering a career in a health-related field, volunteering at a hospital provides me with the chance to work with medical professionals and see what their jobs are like in the real world. My first day at the children's hospital was very warm and accepting. I was very anxious to meet the

Throughout the years I feel that I’ve had a number of valuable experiences, my most significant experience is my volunteering experience at Children’s Hospital Colorado. I still remember feeling utterly terrified on my first day volunteering, pondering all the possible ways things could go wrong. I suddenly felt as though I have never experienced this before. I was on my own, responsible for myself and all of my actions.

Volunteering at Texas Health Presbyterian Plano is my way of giving back to the community while developing critical social skills, and gaining important medical field exposure along the way. It’s an opportunity to change a person’s life, including my own. I volunteered at two hospitals last summer and I’m well acquainted with what volunteering entails and would more than love to do it again. Through this hospital volunteer program, I hope to discover my own passions and talents, while also developing skills that I will utilize throughout my entire high school and college experience.

I bit my tongue, it was literally hanging from the side of my mouth, blood was everywhere, and my family was aghast and in agony. My family immediately called 911 and an ambulance rushed me to the emergency room. During my hospital visit, I felt angry, frustrated and hopeless because I was unable to tell my parents what was going on and there was nobody there that could tell them in our native language, Spanish. The nurses who assisted me were white women. They did make me feel cared for but I think that seeing someone that spoke Spanish and could tell my parents my situation would have been an easier. This experience made me reflect on the need for male Latino nurses. There continues to be an underrepresentation of Latino and overall bilingual nurses in the healthcare field. As the Latino community is growing, it should be a priority to meet their needs. I want to be an agent of change in the medical field, by demystifying the perception that seeking medical assistance will make underrepresented groups a target. I want to be a nurse to help out the entire community given my own experience. I want patients to feel comfortable in a medical environment which provides them with staff they can relate to and they can look up to. As a Latino male nurse, I could also serve as a mentor for other young Latino men so they too can achieve whatever they set themselves to do. I want to be that transformative leader who brings balance to a medical group by offering a different perspective and skills that will strengthened the

Serving these populations is much more than serving food but also considering each individual’s unique story in its entirety. Some may have a dark past, some suffer from addiction, and others lose faith. As a hospital volunteer, I also served patients by spending quality time and assisting their needs. By simply understanding their viewpoint, I influenced them to believe in hope for a greater future. I learned that to effectively provide care for others, it is necessary to consider all the small scenes that combine to produce each person’s story. Compassion and service toward my patients are the sole ingredients for effective

Over the course of a month, I dedicated time to volunteer with agencies that focus on providing safe and productive programs for children. Stop Child Abuse Now also known as SCAN, focuses on stopping/preventing child abuse in homes. This agency teams with many different agencies around Richmond to help parents and children coop and learn way to avoid situations of abuse. My duty for volunteering was teaming with Virginia Commonwealth University Health Services and making SCAN a known organization throughout Richmond community. VCU threw a wellness block party that included many different health services but also gave members of the community to learn and seek help with many different organizations that were there promoting their business or organization. I sat with one other girl and passed out flyers and contact information to those who were interested in the organizations. I explained to individuals what the program was about and the benefits of the program. I had one particular interaction with this young mother who explained she was in a situation where children were being abused and the authorities were notified and now she’s seeking counseling for her and the children involved. I and the other young lady volunteering with me were able to give her information on the program and also contact numbers to individuals that could help her situation. This young woman was very grateful and happy she found an organization that could assist her with her situation. From this

After a single telephone call to the Children’s Hospital Volunteer Services Coordinators, I learned that volunteers were readily accepted to serve within the hospital’s recreational therapy deparment. When they asked my reason for volunteering, I explained to them that I wanted to help the children develop their leadership potential as well as other abilities. The members of volunteer services seemed excited.

The origin of my passion for helping children emanated from my own family history. I was born into a low-income family; the eldest daughter of two immigrant parents. My parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic, and barely spoke English. Being a young bride, my mother had her first child when she was just fourteen years old, and subsequently, bore four more children. My father worked menial jobs to make ends meet and support the family. Unfortunately, with little education or knowledge of the English language, these jobs yielded meager monetary earnings.