Any kinds of volunteering will make me a better nurse?

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I started looking for volunteering for the summer today.

I found about one place and they do all kinds of volunteering: from Art with Elders to Young Independent Peoples Society (YIPS)

One of the volunteering is "Friendly Visitor": Many residents at Laguna Honda have no one to visit them. As a friendly visitor you would talk with the residents, play games, socialize, read books, read the newspaper, letter writing, strolls, run errands, etc.

Even if it has nothing to do with clinical situations, volunteering as helping others would help me become a better nurse.

I am guessing.

This is my first time volunteering, so any suggestions will help me. :)

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Specializes in Oncology, Critical Care.

Volunteering is a nice thing to do, but may not help with anything past the resume. Since you wont be doing anything clinical or even didactic to nursing, theres limitations. The benefits is you can learn to work with geriatric patients or patients with disabilities, and maybe get some eye sighting of nursing, but thats kind of it.

If you actually want to get experience, either Emergency Medical Technician (EMT-Basic) or Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA) are much better routes. If you plan to go for ER work or anything thats a little more high paced, many hospitals (at least the ones ive been to in an ambulance or clinicals) prefer to have nurses hired who have a proven track record of able to keep calm under pressure and focused on the patient. Im not saying not doing EMT wont get you a position in an ER or equivalent, but if a hiring manager had two applicants, one with years of experience as an EMT, and the other without (with no other factors to change the decision (Equal opportunity, pay, etc)) then they'd prefer the experienced. Even now as a Nursing Student I applied to a hospital for the summer as a student nurses aide, and my EMT-basic makes me a stronger applicant because it shows i have an understanding of what occurs in an ER and what my role would be (from what the manager told me). CNA gives you the idea of what your first semester would be like, it's an eye opener to the field, and you work directly with patients. Both give you a great foundation to build on and expand your knowledge.

But if you want a no skill volunteering, then yes volunteering in a nursing home is a good way to go.

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It will help you with therapeutic communication. Which is always a good thing b

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