volunteer at a hospital

[seek4hope]

Hi,

I am currently volunteering at a local hospital. I only have one month to learn and network with other nurses there. I have been volunteering in a labor and delivery for 3 days so far and to be honest, I didn't really learned a thing. But that is okay because I understand that is due to the liability and my main purpose is to network with as many nurses and doctors as possible within one month. However, they seem to be busy people so I find it is extremely hard to talk and make contact with them after I leave for nursing school. So, my questions are:

1) I know I must initiate but how can i go to make them give me more work to do so I can learn something helpful before starting nursing school?

2) How can I effectively network with these people so I can keep contact with them after I leave?

3) How can I make them remember me as a good candidate for nursing jobs if there is one open in the future?

Thank you very much for your time reading my post and any input will be greatly appreciated.

[gumby1411]

Be a sponge. Soak up all the information that you can. Listen to conversations between nurses and doctors and patients. Find a couple of nurses that would be willing to help and ask questions. When I was volunteering in a hospital, I observed the nurses from afar at first. I learned which ones were nice and which ones were not so nice. When the nice nurses were not too busy, I'd talk to them. I'd ask them a question about say, the medications they were getting for their patient or any thing else medical that I could think of. I found a couple of nurses that were more than willing to tell me what they were doing and why and even one nurse that let me shadow her for my 4 hour shift. She took me into patient's rooms and let me watch her change dressings, pass meds, insert catheters, etc. It was a huge learning opportunity.

My advice is to figure out which nurses would be willing to help you and start talking to them. When they're not busy, ask them questions.

Also, offer to help out as much as you can. I let all the nurses know that if there was anything they needed help with, to let me know. Some of them would give me extra jobs and the ones that didn't at least appreciated the offer.

Make sure that the responsibilities that you currently have as a volunteer are taken care of. Hard work goes a long way. I had several nurses and aids tell me that I was the hardest working volunteer they've had. That will make a dent when it comes to finding a job once school is done.

Good luck!!