Volunteering Help, PLEASE?

[saccharin]

I am starting my prereq's this fall. I am really excited to get them over with and start the nursing program. anyhow, I was just curious about volunteering at my local hospital....

1) what kind of work would I be doing? I'm not asking because I don't want to get stuck with dirty work(because I won't mind :)) but because I want to make sure it is something I can handle.

2) Would I be mostly helping nurses or patients or what?

3) Do nurses/doctors feel that volunteers only get in their way?

4) Do hospitals REALLY need volunteers?

5) Do a lot of people volunteer?

6) How many hours can I get?

I just want to get some good hospital experience because I am itching to become a nurse, but I just wanted to research volunteering a little just to make sure I can handle it.

[zambezi, BSN, RN]

Another area that you could look into is being a monitor tech in a telemetry or critical care unit, though not all hosptials use them. In our unit, the MT is also our unit secretary and inputs all of our orders, answers phones, runs/posts/and monitors tele, updates RN if changes (the RN also watches their own patients but it is a nice extra pair of eyes), if a code is called the MT makes sure continuous rhythm strips are running, calls to have the code announced overhead, makes sure that xray, rt, etc are on their way, as well as various other functions...it is a paid position, can also be on-call, etc...when i was in school, we also had various people as hospice voluenteers and all had very positive things to say about it and were glad that they had done it...good luck...

[mystc42]

Hospitals always need volunteers but I agree with the others. I grew up with nurses so I knew that was what I wanted. I got a basis of what I do at a nursing home as a CNA, but once I went to the hospital I learned more than I was prepared for. And not so much its overwhelming you just want to take everything in and if you are just volunteering you don't get as much hands on training since you can't actually do any patient care.

Good luck to you in school!!