Share Your Hospital Volunteer Experience

patrickd223 said:

If you want to show off and talk about how you performed a triple bypass surgery on an ethiopian orphan during a tornado than please do not post.

Click to expand...

Haha.

Or the classic "I singlehandedly ran an outdoor Somalian health clinic while a locust storm was upon us during the dry season whilst simutaneously performing heart surgery on three newborns"

I got to wheel a couple of convicts out of the hospital after surgery flanked by corrections officers/police.

That was pretty much the most exciting part of hospital volunteering...ugh. I recommend working in a hospital setting to get clinical experience and volunteering elsewhere - I didn't get to do much and it was hard to work into my schedule.

I volunteer around 3-5 hours a week at the children's hospital in Atlanta and have for over a year now. I have two "placements" The first is working with the school program where I tutor kids (the teachers love that I can do upper-level math/science with HS students)... then i break out the games, paints, and craft and do child life on a floor with general surgery and respiratory patients. I LOVE it... overall I have aquired over 200 hours! I also have been able to see different procedures and such being in patients rooms- everything for work with chest tubes to blood transfusions, and other random exams.

I also volunteered with the Crohns and Colitis foundation of America and worked a summer camp for kids with Crohns disease. It was amazing. Not only did I build lasting relationships with my campers I was able to learn a lot from the GI who was at camp all week and other GIs who visited. And I can tell you all the different drugs used to treat Crohns now too!

I thought that was funny about Africa- I went there too but it was medical just working with orphans and school kids...no surgery! I didn't think about all the bragging when I went though I was 18 and had desired to go there my entire life!

I have volunteered about 30 hrs in a large hospital neurology dept, which was way boring and basically consisted of doing paperwork, stocking shelves( which got me into a passive aggressive turf war with some nurse or tech when I stocked too far) and occasion helping turn beds and feeding people.

Also I have about 30 hours in the ER when the neuro dept became too boring. The ER dept was more fast paced and interesting. I work full-time, so I usually go in at night after I get home. I tagged along with a tech, who basically despised me, but would allow me to fetch stuff for him as well as some basic patient care like moving people around and changing IVs, etc. He could have limited me far more than he did, which I am grateful for. They actually allow me a fair amount of responsibility, which was cool.
I wore the badge with "volunteer" on it I had the same scrubs on and I doubt many noticed I was not a regular tech.

Overall the ER was a better experience and I got to see the whole spectrum of bodily functions, some normal, some definitely not. I have seen gsw, car accidents, some procedures like suturing, a ton of different sticks in various places and unfortunately some people who did not survive. Definitely has helped to confirm my decision to enter medical school and I will be going back as soon as my MCAT studying has been squared away.