Having been a volunteer and also a 'tech' who essentially directs volunteers in the departments, here's my two cents:
1) This is a great time for you to experiment (within reason) and develop your interpersonal skills. Yes, most of you will think that, "I'm sociable!" or " I HAZ FRENDS!" but it's more about how you can develop rapport with people just from that limited 1-3 sentence exchange. (not saying i can sell anything to anyone, but its something to think about.) Also, bear in mind that most of your friends and interactions (REMEMBER, MOST OF YOU GUYS ARE IN COLLEGE) are either with other college students (which in sdn circles might be the super studious dork, or in tradition college life of parties, having fun, going to school), or maybe with a professor (highly educated). Unless your hospital only serves the well-off, odds are your patients will be from a different part of town than you, live a different life than you, have substantially different values than you. It does impress me when a volunteer I know to be a super studious affluent person be able to laugh and joke around with a patient from the inner-city. When you're training as a physician, you'll see a similar set of people too as your patients. Good to get started early with that.
What do I use as my go-to line? I usually ask them where they're from (not country, unless that happens to be the case, but just regionally). A pretty benign conversation.
2) People say as volunteers you don't get to do much. True, but entertaining and being able to develop rapport with patients is also important too. Hippocrates, Osler, others have said "Cure sometimes, relieve often, comfort always." Yes, some people don't want to be bothered. But in my experience, having an interaction with a charismatic individual who is conversational is usually not that bothersome. (Unless you're on a morphine PCA pump...might want to leave them alone) I think people are more annoyed when the volunteer is socially awkward because their awkwardness usually makes the patients feel more uneasy. My point is that volunteers whine about this, but having been on the other side of the fence, most volunteers work for a few weeks and quit, some will just clock in, go to the cafeteria for 2 hours and clock out, etc. With my work being busy, it's not my job to figure out how you can be involved without being 'clinically involved'. For me, I'm more impressed when a volunteer sits down and can develop a conversation with a patient. It tells me 1) You actually give a 5h1t (or try to), 2) you're actually in the department and not in the cafeteria, and 3) If they need anything, I can count on you to let me know so I don't have to keep checking in on them on top of all of my other tasks.
3) Last point, its important to appreciate how much time you will have to develop patient rapport because as you continue your training, your interactions with patients will become more and more brief as time progresses. (You just get busier. And no, you DON'T need an MD to interact with a patient, aka a human being, lol) If you're having difficulty interacting with people as a volunteer, it really raises a red flag in my book.
