My Volunteer at the Massachusetts General Hospital - Essay Example

?Reflective essay on my volunteer at the Massachusetts General Hospital Over the summer, I worked as a volunteer at the Massachusetts General Hospital. As one of the largest and best hospitals around offering volunteer opportunities in the country, it was a pleasure being there. I had a number of duties to carry out, including among others responding to discharge calls from patient floors. I also played a role in writing appropriate information on index cards for discharge volunteers, logging requests into logbooks, wheel patients to departing destinations, keep company patients while waiting departure vehicles, help information desk staff meet the needs of visitors and patients in the hospital, escort patients to various places within the hospital. These opportunities to help as a volunteer really offered me great a challenge to meet with every rising sun always. As a volunteer, I realized how difficult it could get with each passing day. Dealing with patients from all occupations was no easy thing. Although time was always so limited, I had the opportunity to retrieve wheelchairs and newspapers from the sitting area. This work demonstrates my deep understanding of volunteering with the ultimate goal of touching somebody’s life in a big way. Patients who came to seek treatment at times were so disadvantaged, had so many problems finding their way around some things and others were just in so much pain. It is not every day that people wake up with the best of moods; this is something I learned at the registration desk. Some of the patients I attended to there were so hard to deal with. Other ended up insulting me for what I was doing but that did not deter me from wholeheartedly serving them. I knew from the word go that it was always going to be the great test of my character just being there. One time while wheeling a patient, she stopped me in my tracks, and vehemently demanded an explanation on why I was so in a hurry yet to I was doing it in the required manner. It was so disturbing, to say the least, I told myself time and again that, at the end of the day, it was not about me but about those patients who could do nothing to help themselves out. The significance of me volunteering was to change their lives, put a smile on their faces and above all offer them hope. While giving patients company, I realized that talking to them was so calming. I became a friend to them in a big way. Some of them were so lonely at times while others had their relatives not coming to visit them. Therefore, this had a negative impact on their healing process. I love and enjoyed sitting down with them and sharing experiences. As I engaged them in conversations, they opened up to me without fear of any kind whatsoever. Those who had been traumatised by their illness could belatedly smile, and occasionally get to laugh. I got this joy from sitting down with them. While the hospital staff was getting overwhelmed by patient demands, my presence as a volunteer offered them a big and significant reprieve. They could depend on me, and the trust hey had in me was always an encouragement. When one Evans realised how easy I was communicating with patients, he gave me the chance to meet visitors and arriving patients. I had the ability to be calm at all times even under pressure and exercised a high level of professionalism when dealing with patients. Handling these duties on his behalf encouraged me to do more and more every day. Most of the time, I had to stand for long hours in order to be effective in handling my duties. My three-hour shift became my favourite time at the hospital. Because of my ability to stand and walk for many hours, I found it nice. At all times, I valued and liked the challenges I encountered. I overcame them overwhelmingly particularly on the section of wheeling patients to various places round the hospitals. Pushing them around filled me with so much joy. The elderly patients especially were so much grateful. Another Important trait I posses is genuine interest in children. As a family person, I love being around children. I am particularly warm and patient around them so much that I can be able to talk them into calming down and cheering their spirits up. I made this possible while working in the paediatrics unit. It was an even bigger challenge compared to the other sections of the hospitals. Dealing with sick children is particularly hard, for they always think they are under punishment. In that unit, I assisted Child Life Specialists with activities for patients that included arranging wards and keeping them in order, assist Child Life Specialists in support of the Ronald McDonald Family Respite Room. This is a very important section within the hospital as it offers families a good and calm place to stay. The rest they get there is always significant in their children’s healing and treatment process. Other duties I did there included reading stories and playing games with patients, visit patents in their bedsides, offer parents opportunities to take breaks from the unit and keep the playing room neat and orderly. I noticed that reading stories to them helped them forget albeit for a while their illness. It was always a nice way for them to smile and be happy and to know that they were never alone. Keeping them in groups was another method I employed to encourage cooperation and sharing. Each child got an opportunity to say something and to tell a story. This brought a sense of togetherness, and we all looked like one big family. My sensitivity to their family members brought me even closer to them. In a short while, I had nurtured a good friendship with them and their families. Working here demonstrated my love for volunteer work and a good understanding of needs of patients who go through hell in their illnesses. Having done something worthy and good in the eyes of everybody and the Lord up above proved important in my volunteer work at MGH. This work was meaningful because it offered me a platform to put into use my skills and at the same time give me a chance to have a firsthand experience in my future carrier. As a student of biology, volunteering helped me learn a lot from the physical environment to how human beings behave and act in bad health. I learned different diseases and their manifestation, how they affect the behaviour of patients and what can be done to psychologically help them. I am particularly proud of how I got ho handle myself all through and how I carried out my duties. One thing for sure is that I left the place, not the way I found it. I had made a difference in someone’s life; I had put a smile on an ailing child’s face. Nothing gratified me more than this. I enjoyed volunteering work because it gave me a chance to improve not only as a student of biology, but also as a person. I had never thought I could volunteer in such a big way. While growing up in a well off family with everything I could ask for, I did not anticipate at one moment that I would ever do such type of work. However, here I was, in a hospital with so many people needing help. I wondered why so many patients would lie in their beds with their heads down and their spirits low. I kept asking myself why so many people had to suffer a lot. This unanswered questions propelled me to work on ways of helping them out, assist them whenever possible and make a difference in their lives. Now I understand that every small thing we do make big differences in the lives of the needy. They are so important in every aspect and deserve the best from those who are able and of sound health. In volunteering work, what we do should not only be physically oriented by also psychological. It is the mind that can change how a person feels in any circumstance. That’s why we should at all times get more up close and personal with those in need. Being friendly and caring makes a lot more difference in their lives. This work was a great challenge for me because of the many duties I had been assigned and the less time always at my disposal. Waking up so early, having to drive for miles to the hospital, and working until late in the afternoon was at times overwhelming. Nevertheless, the insatiable need to make a difference in the hospital and my desire to help always kept me on my toes. I still feel the hospital staffs needs to do more in accommodating those willing to do volunteer work. I am not satisfied with this work because I was restricted to certain duties, which denied me the freedom to exploit my skills. Nonetheless, am so happy and grateful for that wonderful opportunity the hospital offered me. As professional, this work shows evidence of my vision and mission towards achieving my goals. It has played a significant part in shaping my mental position on the future of my biology carrier. As I progress in my studies, I have come to embrace the importance of skill development and embracing of new technology. In that regard, I want to focus my time in learning how to use modern and sophisticated biological and medical apparatus and computer applications. While in that hospital, I saw how technology can help reduce workload significantly for instance, writing of appropriate information on index cards. This can be computerised or easy access and usage. An employer can be interested in this because of the level of first hand experiences I managed to get from the hospital. The great recommendation too I was given by the hospital general managers speaks volumes of my work in that hospital. This reminds me of my final two years is a high school where our teachers would tell us to always embrace community service and volunteering work, how they help one in acquiring employment and how it helps develop one’s CV. My elder siblings too were able to get employment by doing volunteering work in different places. I found out that helping others as a volunteer can be so hard at times, but its significance goes a long way in changing the society. Thus, we should be able to do it while we have good health, desire to help and hearts to make a difference in people’s lives. As time passes by, I would like to pursue additional learning in this area because many people still ignore and ignore it. Works Cited Thompson, Alison. The Third Wave: A Volunteer Story. Birmingham, NY: Cengage learning, 2003. Little, Helen. Volunteers: How To Get Them, How To Keep Them. 1st Edn, USA: Panacea Press, 1999. McKee, Jonathan. The New Breed: Understanding and Equipping the 21st Century Volunteer. California, CA: Group Publishing, 2007. Read More