Yesterday’s training went really well!
Late yesterday afternoon, I attended an orientation and training at the Munroe Regional Medical Center (MRMC) with the hope of learning all about volunteer opportunities within the hospital.
I was inspired to look into volunteering at MRMC by one of the Livestrong group participants at my gym. He is a volunteer at the hospital and when I heard him talking about his experience, I asked him a few questions after one of our meetings and was immediately intrigued.
As I learned yesterday, there are so many volunteer positions available at the hospital. I filled out an application and indicated certain preferences, including whether I wanted a sedentary or active volunteer position and whether or not I wanted to work directly with people and/or patients.
I then met with an interviewer who asked me a series of questions and helped guide me to certain areas where she thought I might be a good fit. I was interested in central transport (escorting people to/from where they need to go), working in the hospital gift shop, assisting nurses and patient visitation.
I ended up signing on for patient visitation! As it was explained to me, those volunteering within patient visitation are mainly responsible for greeting patients once they are settled in their rooms and taking them through basics (like how to operate the remote, request a newspaper, etc.) and answering any questions. I will have to go through a four to six week training and pass a final evaluation, but I’m excited to get started!
Before the orientation was over, we sat through about two hours of training as we learned all about HIPAA, suicide prevention, infection prevention, MRMC’s values and mission and more. (During my first day of on-site training, I am required to bring back my answers to an at-home test that touches on all of these things as well.)
I really appreciated such a thorough and in-depth training and orientation and I’m looking forward to volunteering!
Breakfast
Breakfast this morning was a throwback overnight oats recipe.
Peanut butter oatmeal cookie dough overnight oats! It’s a favorite of mine and I need to make it more often. So good!
I topped my oats with a handful of chipotle maple almonds since I didn’t have any peanuts on hand and thought it was delicious.
Plans for the day include workin’ and teachin’!
Have a great Thursday!
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I am a NICU nurse and we love our volunteers! We call them “baby cuddlers” and they walk around and help out nurses when babies are cranky and don’t have family with them. They get to play with the babies or just hold and rock them. I was a NICU volunteer in college and it is what made me decide to go to nursing school! Glad to hear you are going to be volunteering at the hospital!
Wow that’s some intense volunteer training! I think its a great thing to do and the patients and staff will really appreciate it.
How fun! I was a hospital volunteer in high school. I started as a candy stripper, running errands as needed, passing out newspapers and delivery of flowers/balloons. After a year of that, I got to work in a specific unit. I picked Labor & Delivery! I really loved my time there, but then high school just got too busy for me and I had to give it up.
I always wish we had more volunteers – the unfortunate part about nursing is that we don’t always have time to just sit and be with patients since we usually have something to be doing. Many of our patients don’t have family or their family isn’t able to be there all the time, and sometimes people just want someone to be with them. I wish we had volunteers for that! Despite working at a huge hospital, I don’t think we utilize volunteers much, if at all. Hope you enjoy the experience and hope to hear about it!
It’s great that you are planning to volunteer. This definitely motivates me to get off my butt this summer and do something good. I used to volunteer a lot before I got busy…. but we should never be TOO busy to do some good! 🙂 Looking forward to hearing more about your experience!
I love this! Every year, I conduct 31 Random Acts in the month of October, and write about them on my blog. I’m definitely going to look into volunteering at a local hospital as one of my acts!
Love it!
Hi Julie, It’s nice to nice to see that you volunteer in the same place I do. I am just a freshman in high school, but its cool that you work there too. I work at Central Transport, and I love doing it. I have noticed this year that “patient visitation” is now a new job for incoming volunteers, and I am excited to meet new people. Anyways, nice seeing your fabulous blog, and have fun volunteering! 🙂