Direct patient contact volunteer experiences

[gkbroaro]

Please help!

For direct-entry MSN programs, I have read that they are looking for "direct patient contact". I have found some "direct patient contact" volunteer work at Lucille Packard Childrens Hospital and want to know if this is the type of stuff that nursing school admissions are actually looking for. Some of the things don't seem too "health-focused" to me.

--playing with children who are waiting for appointments

--reading stories to children in outpatient clinics

--doing art projects with children in the hospital

Thanks! ginillel

[gkbroaro]

http://www.lpch.org/pdf/volunteerInfoPacket.pdf

the website if you want to check it out!

[pinkiepie_RN]

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but think about it: there's not much patient care you can do without a degree. This volunteer work is direct patient contact, well...because you're going to be working with patients. What do you think the volunteer experience should entail? I think it sounds fun honestly, particularly if you'd like to work with children in pediatrics after graduation from a program. Good luck and I hope this helps.

[onedayaRN]

anything helps!

more importantly it will help you with your level of experience.

angela - philly

[jjjoy, LPN]

Taking a nursing assistant course with a hands-on clinical component would likely be more useful. Ask at vocational training programs, community colleges, hospitals, and local nursing homes to find out about local programs.

Or a phlebotomy course or EMT course if that's easier to come by where you are. Both of those should include direct patient contact if they have a hands-on component to the training.

Unit secretaries don't have direct patient contact but they do have lots of contact with everything non-patient contact... transcribing orders, calling physicians, etc. I've seen courses for that some places & it really gets you in close with working nurses.

[WorkinTheStreets]

If you are not an EMT and have the ability to join a volunteer organization that uses that level skill...you can't find a better place to get some direct patient care experience. Depending on where you live, this may or may not be an option. You actually provide direct patient care to all those folks who get shot, fall, get smashed in cars, stuck in farm equipment, hit will baseballs, decide to deliver their baby in the supermarket and generally get hurt by things you just can't make up. Someone has to keep them alive before the hospital gets them. It might as well be you!!

I personally do not volly EMS, it's my job. While the skill sets are a bit different, I have mad a lot of contacts, established my professionalism (Charting, people skills, analytical skills and clinical skills) with may an ER charge nurse. It will pay dividends come job hunting time....

[nursingstudent721]

Volunteering can't hurt either "work experience" even though you don't have direct contact with the patients. Just being around in the healthcare setting and just being around it you learn a lot. I volunteered in the ER and the nurses taught me a lot and that's really how I knew that the corporate world isn't for me in which I have a degree in Information Technology so that's why I decided to change my major after I had already decided to be a teacher.