Advice

If I could give one piece of advice to anyone even thinking about volunteering it would be to just start.  I know for me I had always thought about volunteering and it sounded like a great idea but I never took that first step to get started.  Once I did start it ended up being better than I could have imagined.  I think for many people the hardest part about volunteering is getting your foot in the door. Once your in somewhere it is going to be rewarding! Another bit of advice I would give is to just commit 100% of yourself if you are going to volunteer because the more you commit, the more you get back. The relationships and experience you can gain from a volunteer experience is unlike any other and is worth every hour that you put in.

My Growth

Coming into this volunteering opportunity I did not know what to expect and I did not have any experience with long term volunteering.  I had set some general goals for myself in the beginning but I still didn't know exactly what I would get out of this.  One of my big goals was to just get experience in a hospital setting and to find out what it is like to work in a hospital environment.  I think that through my volunteering I am now comfortable with the hospital atmosphere.  I am more confident in my knowledge of healthcare and the hospital and I found out that there is so much more to healthcare then I realized.  Another of my goals was to try and gain confidence and to break out of my shell.  I think that this volunteering really helped me be more comfortable talking with new people and networking myself within the hospital. I met so many great people through volunteering and I know that those relationships will definitely help me in the future. One of my last goals was to hopefully find out what I like in healthcare and what I might want to do as a career going forward.  In terms of finding my dream job, I didn't even come close. But what this experience did do for me was open my eyes to the countless different careers that are available in healthcare.  I may not have found my perfect career but I know that there is so many things out there for me to choose from and now I just need to continue to explore.

The Big World of Healthcare

I have always known that healthcare is a big field and that there are a lot of things that go into making a hospital run efficiently, but after being in a hospital and being able to work in one week to week I am amazed at just how much there is in healthcare.  From the transport technicians to the neurosurgeons, there are so many people that are instrumental in making the hospital run smoothly.  Through my volunteering experience I was able to discover some of these jobs that I didn't even know existed but without them the hospital would be a mess. One of theses jobs that I had the opportunity to work closely with were the transport technicians.  I am sure that like me, many people do not even know that this is a job in a hospital.  However these techs are responsible for getting patients from floor to floor and room to room and without them patients would be extremely limited as to where they could go to get treatment in the hospital.  This is just one of the many jobs that make up the huge field of healthcare.  I learned a lot about healthcare through my volunteer experience and I know there is still so much more that I look forward to learning about in the future.

Being a Physician

As I said in my previous post, I did not have a ton of physician contact in my position at the front desk.  However, I still saw physicians every time I volunteered and though I may not have had direct contact with them I was able to learn a lot about what it is to be a physician.  The first thing I learned about physicians is how they are almost always thinking about their patients and what they can do to help them. Often times physicians would come out to the main lobby and would be on their phones talking with other doctors trying to collaborate and figure out the best solution for their patients.  That ties right in with another thing that I picked up on and that is that physicians are almost always in collaboration with each other. I would often hear them asking each other what they think would be best and they were figuring out solutions together. I think the overall theme that I picked up from the physicians at the hospital is how much time and effort they put into their patients.  The amount of time and work that the physicians put into their patients amazes me and I have the utmost respect for them.

What Did I Do?

As a volunteer at the front desk in the main lobby of the East band hospital I had several responsibilities. This was a fairly new position that the volunteer department had put in place when I arrived so it was a learning experience for all of us.  My main job was to be available for any guest or patient who needed information about the building or who needed help getting somewhere.  I would often point people in the direction of something they were looking for, or if necessary, I would walk with them to the place they wanted to get to. Another job I had was to make sure that the wheelchairs in the main lobby did not start to overflow. If there were too many I would wheel them to an area of the hospital that needed them.

Like:  With this position I really like the freedom and the wide variety of things that I did.  There were often little side jobs that I was given and I was able to do different things every week.  I really enjoyed being able to get to know the hospital better. I think that as a result of this volunteer position I realized how much more there is to the hospital than I had ever imagined.  Another part that I enjoyed was getting to know the family and visitor aspect of the hospital better.  I think a lot of times when we think about the hospital all we think of is sick patients and doctors and we forget that there are so many other people affected by sickness and injury then just patients and doctors. I liked being able to interact with guests and being able to help them and hopefully remove a little stress from all that they were dealing with.

Dislikes: Although I did love the visitor and guest interaction aspect of this position, I got to have very little patient contact.  I rarely dealt with patients or doctors and I wish that was something that I could have had a little more of.  When I did get to escort patients to places in the hospital though I found it very rewarding.  Another part of this position that I did not like was the down time that I had. I found myself often times with not much to do.  This is partially because it is a new volunteer position and they are still trying to figure it out completely and it also could have been that I wasn't there at the busiest times.  

UMMC Fairview Front Desk

Hello, my name is Jonah Poppen and I am a sophomore at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. This past semester I volunteered at the University of Minnesota Medical Center Fairview, it is the hospital that is on the University of Minnesota campus. It employs physicians of all kinds and serves numerous areas of medicine.  I had the privilege this past semester to volunteer for them.  UMMC serves a vast majority of people and they have almost anything you could need in terms of medical facilities and services.  I volunteered at the front desk on the East bank campus at the main hospital.  My job was to sit with the front desk worker and assist him in helping guests and patients find their way throughout the hospital.  I was there to provide information and also to chauffeur people around to where they needed to get to in the hospital.  With the hospital being so big and complex my position was needed for those who hadn't been to the hospital before or wanted someone to show them the way.