What do you do when you volunteer at the hospital?

[integralx2]

I have volunteer work under my belt, but not in the hospital. What kind of work would i be expected to do? Handing out towels I just cant see myself doing that. I have very good computer skills, organization skills, and communication skills. Any insight would be great from people who done it.

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[mipp0]

Quite frankly, due to liability issues, you don't do much of anything. If you want substantial clinical volunteer opportunities, I'd recommend you apply for a hospital internship program or help run a free clinic (I'd stick to the former though)--even better, humanitarian trips/missions, etc.

If you're a volunteer at a hospital, you're wasting your time. Same as shadowing. I think shadowing is a waste of time, and I've shadowed "voted Best Doctor" specialists, etc.

 

[ezsanche]

You do a whole bunch of boring stuff.

 

[circulus vitios]

My job was to deliver stuff from the cafeteria to departments around the hospital. It sucked horribly. I quit after 2 days.

 

[icalz]

Quite frankly, due to liability issues, you don't do much of anything. If you want substantial clinical volunteer opportunities, I'd recommend you apply for a hospital internship program or help run a free clinic (I'd stick to the former though)--even better, humanitarian trips/missions, etc.

If you're a volunteer at a hospital, you're wasting your time. Same as shadowing. I think shadowing is a waste of time, and I've shadowed "voted Best Doctor" specialists, etc.

Don't mistake the purpose of volunteering and shadowing. For volunteering, of course the admissions committee wants to see you have a demonstrable desire to practice medicine; however, for both shadowing and volunteering they are not expecting you learn anything such as how to insert a central line. What the adcoms are hoping for is that you get exposed to what a doctor does and (1) see that it's not like the TV shows and (2) hope that you have conversations with the doctor you shadow to give you insight into what it really is like practicing medicine.

How would it look if you got accepted into med school and then had to drop out because you learned you couldn't stomach the sight of blood? I would hope that volunteering or shadowing would answer this and most questions you might have....it did for me. I spoke with the doctor I shadowed about sleep deprivation, money management, letters of recommendation, long hours, etc....

Don't go into your volunteering or shadowing expecting to do anything...especially for shadowing, you are strictly to observe.

 

[bannie22]

CT Scan

 

[icalz]

My job was to deliver stuff from the cafeteria to departments around the hospital. It sucked horribly. I quit after 2 days.

I never would've accepted that position in the first place !! It's best to find a position where you can observe some type of doctor-patient interaction.

 

[TheMightySmiter]

My hospital volunteer job sucks. I buzz people in and out of labor and delivery and give them visitor badges.

Sometimes I get to make cookies though. No joke.

 

[circulus vitios]

I never would've accepted that position in the first place !! It's best to find a position where you can observe some type of doctor-patient interaction.

I signed up for a volunteer job in the emergency room or the surgical waiting room. I guess they had different plans for me.

 

[Meat]

I actually feel like I do quite a good amount as a volunteer at my hospital. I've rotated through four departments so far, including Observation Unit, ER, OR and Gastroenterology.

Activities:
1. Take patient vital signs for nurses
2. Connect procedural patients to vital machines (BP cuff, O2 sat, nasal cannula, heart monitor electrodes)
3. Stock, Stock, Stock
4. Move patients (between procedure room and recovery room, and discharge)
5. Clean and restock gurneys
6. Watch procedures! (GI + OR = fun)
7. Take patients in for MRI / CTs
8. Assist in patient feeding
9. Hold down patients for a variety of reasons (IV, catheters, GI procedures)
10. Walk samples down to the lab / records to medical records
11. Get patients water / food / blankets / make their stay nicer

These are just some of the activities I have done in the departments listed above, there's certainly more that just that!

 

[MusicJunkie]

When I volunteered at a hospital, I cleaned the play room in the pediatrics hospital wing and played with kids (video games for older kids, coloring with younger kids). I had a pretty good time.

 

[FloatOn]

You do a whole bunch of boring stuff.

Yep, this pretty much sums of most of hospital volunteering experience.

My hospital volunteer job sucks. I buzz people in and out of labor and delivery and give them visitor badges.

Sometimes I get to make cookies though. No joke.

Sounds awesome to me!

 

[zeppelinpage4]

I put together brochures/pamphlets, alphabetized a bunch of things and worked with excel.

I was able to do patient transport one day and I saw/spoke with actuall patients but mostly it was pushing wheelchairs all day.

This was back in high school though, so things might be different now...though I doubt it.

Hoping to do something more hands on over my summer like working with EMS.

 

[UBCvan]

I think I'm one of the few people who really enjoys his volunteer work in a hospital. I love it.

I'm an ER volunteer. I think ER is the most fun.

I see a lot of actions, blood, screaming, burns, cops, etc.

I have a pass that can get me anywhere in the hospital so I can go and watch whatever I want.

basically I give directions to people who are lost and answer any questions one could have in ER.

i see a lot of cool stories. once they brought in a patient with helicopter who was hit by a train and alive

 

[Gotaro]

It might be different for me, but at my ER clinical for EMT-B training, I mostly stood back and observed. I assisted with patient assessments (a couple times), hooked patients up to monitors (O2 sat, BP cuff), cleaned beds and put new sheets on them, steadied a patient's arm while the nurse was applying a cast, etc. I also observed the ER physician. OH, and I talked to the patients lol.

 

[LittleRichard]

File papers and play gameboy.

 

[JohnnyExtra]

I actually feel like I do quite a good amount as a volunteer at my hospital. I've rotated through four departments so far, including Observation Unit, ER, OR and Gastroenterology.

Activities:
1. Take patient vital signs for nurses
2. Connect procedural patients to vital machines (BP cuff, O2 sat, nasal cannula, heart monitor electrodes)
3. Stock, Stock, Stock
4. Move patients (between procedure room and recovery room, and discharge)
5. Clean and restock gurneys
6. Watch procedures! (GI + OR = fun)
7. Take patients in for MRI / CTs
8. Assist in patient feeding
9. Hold down patients for a variety of reasons (IV, catheters, GI procedures)
10. Walk samples down to the lab / records to medical records
11. Get patients water / food / blankets / make their stay nicer

These are just some of the activities I have done in the departments listed above, there's certainly more that just that!

My hundreds of hours of hospital volunteering have been very similar to Meat's experience, except all in the ED. I do pretty much the exact same stuff. I find that hospital volunteering is less about what you do and more about what you get to see. Being in the ED is pretty much stretches of complete boredom, punctuated with moments of sheer madness where my most important job is to not get in the way. I have seen a lot of pretty cool/weird/crazy/sad things though (gunshot/stab wounds, crazy/irate drug addicts, an old lady who stayed in her backyard for three days after falling while gardening (sad), an idiot who almost bled to death after playing that game where you try to poke a pencil (usually) in between your fingers as fast as you can, but with a knife, etc.) and I got a small monetary scholarship out of it too!

 

[Poliscidoc]

I think I'm one of the few people who really enjoys his volunteer work in a hospital. I love it.

I'm an ER volunteer. I think ER is the most fun.

I see a lot of actions, blood, screaming, burns, cops, etc.

I have a pass that can get me anywhere in the hospital so I can go and watch whatever I want.

basically I give directions to people who are lost and answer any questions one could have in ER.

i see a lot of cool stories. once they brought in a patient with helicopter who was hit by a train and alive

I love volunteering in the ER, that's pretty much what I do too.

 

[Artimacia]

I do patient transport at the local hospital here. It's ok, I like the job a lot but the people who already work (except one who is now one of my best friends, but doesn't work on saturdays anymore) there aren't exactly the nicest people and would rather not have people help them, and that can get annoying when I can't take jobs myself (since I'm not an employee) and have to sit around and ask or wait till someone is fine with it, other than that though I've met a lot of cool patients (one moment in particular will stay with me for a long time) and I've seen some strange things.

 

[mnoon1]

I actually feel like I do quite a good amount as a volunteer at my hospital. I've rotated through four departments so far, including Observation Unit, ER, OR and Gastroenterology.

Activities:
1. Take patient vital signs for nurses
2. Connect procedural patients to vital machines (BP cuff, O2 sat, nasal cannula, heart monitor electrodes)
3. Stock, Stock, Stock
4. Move patients (between procedure room and recovery room, and discharge)
5. Clean and restock gurneys
6. Watch procedures! (GI + OR = fun)
7. Take patients in for MRI / CTs
8. Assist in patient feeding
9. Hold down patients for a variety of reasons (IV, catheters, GI procedures)
10. Walk samples down to the lab / records to medical records
11. Get patients water / food / blankets / make their stay nicer

These are just some of the activities I have done in the departments listed above, there's certainly more that just that!

wow thats a ton of stuff! why dont you become a nurse assistant and do the same for pay?

well on the down side, we get to do all that stuff minus #6

 

[FallenHero]

surf SDN

 

[Mitch556]

take patients back to the room, hand out blankets/pillow, help with admitting...but really I don't do anything.

 

[phonyreal98]

I have 500+ hours of volunteering at two different hospitals over the past five years, have worked in many areas, and here are the duties I can remember having:

• Stocking items
• Filing charts
• Data entry
• Assisting in patient transport
• Refilling the water pitchers in patient rooms
• Wheeling new patients from admissions to their rooms
• Delivering paperwork
• Working in the gift shop
• Observing procedures and surgeries
• Talking to patients
• Giving directions

...and I'm sure that there are many other duties that I've forgotten. However, I can say that I've learned something from every one of these. In the clerical duties, I've learned how much paperwork is present in medicine, to ensure that the patient knows what is going on, that the hospital and/or physician is properly compensated by insurance, et cetera. It seems like NOTHING happens in a hospital without some record of it that must be filed away for x number of years. I've also learned about how stressed some families of patients can be from giving directions and working in the gift shop, and how sometimes the little things can mean a whole lot to a patients' family, who may be stressed with questions such as "Is he/she going to be ok?" or "We don't have insurance, how are we going to pay for this?" etc.

While I've been concentrating on the gruntwork type volunteering so far, this is not to say that I haven't enjoyed my direct patient contact duties as a volunteer and haven't learned a lot from them or that I haven't learned a lot about how an OR works from directly observing different procedures! I'm just saying that if you look, there's always something to learn, even in the grunt-type volunteering positions that you may start out with.

 

[Sed8&Intub8]

I did filing charts mostly. As soon as I would come the lady who was actually responsible for it would stop working, tell me to file everything, and talk on the phone with her friends for the next 3 hours...

Then once they asked me to make sure there are no expired meds in their cabinet...by the time I was done with it more than half of the drugs were removed...it pretty sad to have all those expired drugs in the children's pavilion...

 

[oaklandguy]

I work in the ED. I get patients food and pillows and blankets and what-not. I also get stuff for the nurses, i.e. catheters, IV pumps, etc. Once in a while when it gets super busy the nurses have me take vitals for them or transport stable patients to their room if they are admitted. For the most part though I am stocking rooms with pillow cases, sheets, urinals, bed pans, socks, towels, wash cloths, pads, cleaning solutions etc. I also make the beds when a patient is discharged and wheel the patients in and out when triage is busy. I get to talk to the patients a lot which is nice. You know you get the older patients who just want someone to talk to, so you talk to them and it comforts them and they usually have some wisdom to pass down. They all usually tell me I look like one of their grand kids or they knew someone in the military with the same name as me or something. They usually always wish me luck too and a lot of them appreciate it when I get the warm blankets or water and that is probably the best part of the volunteer experience. I'm not gonna lie though, the majority of the time is boring.

The doctors don't like it when the volunteers are in the rooms when they are, but once in a while I'll get to hold a patient down while the doctors do a spinal injection or suture. Other than that I don't get to see the doctor's too much, but I do get to watch procedures from outside of the rooms once in a while.

 

[drkang]

I think I'm one of the few people who really enjoys his volunteer work in a hospital. I love it.

I'm an ER volunteer. I think ER is the most fun.

I see a lot of actions, blood, screaming, burns, cops, etc.

I have a pass that can get me anywhere in the hospital so I can go and watch whatever I want.

basically I give directions to people who are lost and answer any questions one could have in ER.

i see a lot of cool stories. once they brought in a patient with helicopter who was hit by a train and alive

HELICOPTER hit by a train? LMFAO, thats funny,hahahahah

 

[Paramedic2DocMD]

This seems so hit or miss for volunteer folks. I can tell you that when I did my paramedic training clinicals I had to go to ED,Peds,OB,ICU,Burn,Cath Lab,Resp Rounds, being able to do thing like assesments, start lines (IV), give meds, which was the norm and if lucky do advance airway stuff (intubate). For EMT-I did 150 documented Hosp hours. For EMT-P (Paramedic) I did 220 Hrs alittle over the amount I needed , also documented. All skills documented as well. I did this at 3 different hosp. I got a good amount of interaction with the Docs, mostly during procedures and about them. Sometimes it was alittle slow so I can amagine if you don't have many task like I did you can get alittle bored
Though this is at a EMT-I and Paramedic level you can do this.
To my knowledge EMT-B's don't do Hosp time, but its been awhile since I was a basic.

Good Luck/Disclaimer Don't Take My Word I Wouldn't

 

[Drexon]

I personally hated the first hospital I volunteered at. The hospital had an enormous reserve of pre-med students volunteering but their retention rate of pre-meds was less than 50% after the first 3-6 months.
But honestly I did what most people here have described so far:
Helped discharge patients,
transport patients,
read to children,
did some paper work [organizing etc]
had a few doctors show me some nifty things in the ER
etc.
There's not much a person can do while volunteering or shadowing to prepare themselves for what it would be like to be a doctor. I mean you can't do an internship like an engineer to see what an engineer does. But your time volunteering should give you a good sense of how things are run etc.
I've personally volunteered 200 hrs in a hospital and then did about 200+hrs shadowing a surgeon [the surgeon was a family friend]. The shadowing experience imo is invaluable. It's not about seeing surgeries, but the doctor I followed explained to me everything and showed me his line of reasoning for doing X, Y, and Z. I've gotten serious insight into medicine. But let me remind you that your shadowing experience may vary from doc to doc. It really depends on who you get to shadow and how much you interact with them.

 

[derek320]

HELICOPTER hit by a train? LMFAO, thats funny,hahahahah

He means that a person was hit by a train and then brought to the hospital by helicopter.

 

[mvenus929]

When I volunteered at a hospital, I cleaned the play room in the pediatrics hospital wing and played with kids (video games for older kids, coloring with younger kids). I had a pretty good time.

This is what I did in my hospital volunteering. I really wanted to be a cuddler in the NICU, but when I volunteered, I wasn't old enough (you had to be 21), and now I live too far away from the hospital to do that. The hospital I currently work at doesn't have that strong of a volunteer staff. All that they do is stock the waiting rooms, hand out newspapers to patients, and give directions to people at the information desk.

My clinical experience came from paid experiences. I worked in a pediatrician's office for a year doing filing and insurance stuff. That taught me a lot about how a physician's office is actually run. Now, I work as a phlebotomist in the hospital, and have a ton of non-official shadowing, where I happen to go into the room as the doctor is talking to the patient, or putting in a central line, or having to go into the cath lab to pick up a sample, etc.

 

[Music MD]

Be up front when you are signing up for these jobs that you are looking for clinical exposure for the purpose of applying to medical school. Avoid the gift shop at all costs. Seriously if they don't have a position available with patient contact then you aren't interested and move on to the next place.

The key is to try to find a hospital that is pretty lax with their volunteers. Some are like prisons making sure you don't leave your assigned areas and some are like playgrounds where you can come and go as you please. I don't imply goofing off but when the rules are more easily bent you can get more exposure.

Finally it's up to you to make a volunteer experience worthwhile. The vast majority of these gigs are total BS, but if you are outgoing and willing to look for cool opportunities while you are in the hospital then you can see some pretty sweet stuff as a volunteer. Example if you are volunteering in the ED, actually talk to the patients, nurses, and docs if they don't look too busy. Next time something cool runs through the door they might remember to grab you.

 

[Alwaysbehopeful]

My hospital is pretty different because it's a county hospital so we do all sorts of stuff. It seems most people are pretty bitter but I have done all sorts of things at my hospital.

1. Participate in vaginal deliveries (get to hold a leg and encourage mom)
2. Participate in OBY/GYN surgeries - once in a while can scrub in and hand some instruments, help position patients for anesthesia, fetch things for surgical tech..
3. Perform 12 lead EKG in the ED - LOTS of patient contact
4. Observe level one and level two traumas
5. Perform CPR - not all but 1/3 volunteers have done this
6. Observe all surgeries on the OR floor - stand with/in 1 foot of surgeons, this is really cool because I've seen all sorts of surgeries, even brain surgery!
7. Help to dress bandages, feed patients, walk patients, transport

Rest is basic stuff. A lot of people complain about not doing anything but they don't shop around for volunteering programs. Go to your county hospital because often times they let you do a LOT more!