Day 1:
So,
today was my first face to face meeting with the Volunteer coordinator at St.
Elizabeth East hospital. We both seemed
to hit it off really well. We sat down
and filled out paper work together to make sure everything was done quickly and
properly. The meeting was very casual,
but it gave me a very good insight to what I would be doing at the hospital
during my service hours. From previous phone
calls and conversations, the coordinator knew that I was on a time constraint
due to being pregnant and she was super excited to work with me. She wanted to get my hours started as soon as
possible, which meant I had to go through orientation and my health screening
rather quickly. Now, orientation was
going to be a problem. Normally, the
hospital only offers volunteer orientation like once a month on Saturday
mornings. Well, the orientation for that
month had already past and I work on Saturday mornings. Even through those two difficulties, she was
determined that we would figure something else out. She said she would look into it and get back
to me with some information. Indeed she
did get back to me, and rather quickly.
We set up another meeting and that would be two hours long for me to
complete an online orientation. The
online orientation, consisted of me reading through and watching power points
of basic information about the hospital, then taking a couple quizzes to show
that I knew the material. For the health
screening, I had to prove that I recently had a rubella titer, a flu shot, and
I also had to have a current TB test.
Luckily through my blood work for my prenatal health I had a rubella
titer and my doctor had recently given me a flu shot, so the only thing left
was to get an updated TB test then I was all set. Was my TB test was complete, she called me in
and took me down to the Women’s Center Registration Desk to introduce me to
Tammi. This would be were she placed me
to complete my service hours, which I was pumped about because I soon would be
checking into this part of the hospital myself.
As I read that part towards the end of your post about how you would be working somewhere in the hospital were you will soon be admitted, I couldn’t help but laugh. It seems ironic that you will soon be like one of the people you are learning to help. Hopefully, when you are in the hospital yourself your prior knowledge and experience will help you to begin a new chapter in your life.
ReplyDeleteAnother thought that I had when reading your post was that volunteering at hospitals must really be popular. I had no idea that so many people would be interested in doing that especially considering all the time and effort that you would have to invest just in trying to get a volunteer position. And from the sound of it I don’t think hospital work would be suitable for me, but I certainly respect that you are doing it.
It is nice to see that I am not the only one who had to go through the hospital volunteer process. It seems that your process was so much easier than mine ever was. I did not have any of the shots and stuff that they wanted so I had to get them all at the same time. It was not the most “fun” experience that I have ever had in my life. I wonder if the hospital kept you going through the hoops that I had to go through. It could just be different policies at the different hospitals.
ReplyDeleteThats such a good thing that you got someone who was willing to work with you no matter how difficult! Not all places are that caring when working with volunteers, but you got quite lucky in the end. And to volunteer at a place that you will eventually be is really cool. You will get a behind the scenes type look at what goes on. You will be both the patient and the care staff per say. Sounds like it was off to a positive start!
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