Which type of hospital volunteering is the most intellectually stimulating?

[chacem]

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Hey,

I talked to the head of volunteering a hospital in town, and she essentially told me that I could volunteer in any department I wanted to... So, with that said, what department do y'all work in when you volunteer-- and what jobs do you do?

Also, what area would be the most intellectually stimulating?

Thanks,
Chace

 

[drmota]

the psych ward.
-mota

 

[RayhanS1282]

the psych ward.
-mota

But seriously, try the ER. One of my friends volunteered there while I volunteered at the Eye, Ear and Throat (or was it nose?) department...and I gotta say that we had very contrasting experience. She saw projectile vomiting and I got stuck with filing paperwork from before 1999.

 

[DarkFark]

Given that you need no qualifications and minimal training, 'intellectually stimulating' is seldom a good describer of volunteer work. The key word you're looking for here is exposure, namely from patient contact, and you'll be most likely to get that in the ER or ICU. But not always! My first ER volunteer experience was scut-tastic. Blanket folding and paperwork will not acclimate you to medicine.

 

[DrBowtie]

Path.

Clinical exposure: ER

 

[Faust]

Tell them you want to wipe elders poop. This kind of Job will have you thinking for years.

 

[Moto]

ICU: nothing to see but stabilized, carefully watched patients.
EM: variety, cool stuff on weekend evenings, concert nights, football nights, etc.
OR: not bad if you get a friendly surgeon who will actually acknowledge you and get you involved, explain things to you
Hospice: most meaninful volunteer experience, but literally pretty crappy job

 

[SanDiegoSOD]

"Volunteering" and "Intellectual Stimulation" are mutually exclusive. But if I were to go back to volunteering, it would be in the ER.

 

[45408]

The ER is certainly going to be a grab bag of variety, but make sure you don't think it's going to be the unique portion of your appliction. 😛

 

[abcxyz0123]

try to get in the child life department of a children's hospital. thats where i'm at...3 hours a week of volunteering in the "child lounge" where i play xbox and ps2 with kids who are sick. its a blast.

 

[Shredder]

the one where you play difficult board games, card games, and video games with people. hey, you cant deny its intellectually stimulating in its own right

 

[SBBunny]

I've volunteered in the Pediatric ER, Adult ER, and the ICU.

The patients in the ICU are often very interesting cases and the doctors aren't as frantic and busy as the ER physicians, so they talk, to you more. However, there are some sad cases (i.e. Teenagers who have OD'ed in suicide attempts, elderly patients with no family to visit them). I found that in the ICU I was able to take part in more than in the ER or Peds ER, mainly because of the volume of patients.

The ER is really, really, REALLY busy. However, (at least for me), there's next to nothing that volunteers are allowed to do, so there's a *LOT* of time. I ended up finding a medical textbook and just reading sections that interested me, which was more interesting than waiting for the next person who needed a glass of water. The ER can also be rather depressing (at least in the NYC hospital I volunteered at). A segment of ER patients are there to find a warm bed and food, and there's nothing that anyone can do to change that. I suppose that's what being a doctor is like, though. I felt that even though I felt really down after volunteering, I learned a lot, and the experience strengthened my resolve to go into medicine. Being unable to do anything truly helpful made me realize how much I wanted to be able to actually help people.

Peds ER is fun, but the cases there are usually not really very interesting. In general, parents err on the side of overattentive to their children's health, and so the kids there aren't really horribly ill. The staff is really friendly though and, of course, you get to play with kids. I ended up actually being given a relatively large amount of work to do, but it was really repetitive. The doctors and nurses are really close, too.

I think the main thing you can do to make your volunteering experience most pleasant is to ask doctors and nurses if you can help out with or even just watch procedures. A lot of doctors are also really happy to talk about their experiences with premed classes, medical school, choosing their specialty, etc.

Hope this provides some insight, and apologize if I sound a little full of myself.

-SBBunny