Volunteering

As a volunteer at Lutheran Hospital, I was responsible for helping to both take care of the nursing staff as well as the patients. This included supporting the nursing staff by helping to get them supplies whenever necessary, as well as making sure that patients felt as comfortable as possible. In doing this I was serving in a supporting role to the staff helping to take care of the patient in addition to supporting the patient in their healing process. This role helped me to learn the importance of communication and mutual support between team members. Communication is crucial because it keeps everyone on the same page about the status of a patient and can help us work efficiently to achieve a common goal. With good communication comes good support, and with good support goals can be achieved.

In addition to this, volunteering at Lutheran Hospital helped me to develop a good bedside manner. Bedside manner boils down to communication between a patient and a staff member. This may seem simple at first, but there are many general rules with how you communicate to patients that need to be followed to keep the patients comfortable and satisfied.

As a student at the IUPUI Honors College, I was able to volunteer many times in the local community helping to care for others or to clean up. As an Honors College student, these volunteering activities varied, but some of the experiences that I have been involved in were serving at a homeless shelter, cleaning up cigarette butts/trash on campus, and cooking a meal for families at the Ronald McDonald House. These experiences volunteering with the Honors College have really solidified my desire to make an impact community-wide. This desire translates well to the medical field because a physician caters to the needs of a community by helping to improve the health of the community in which they work. Through these volunteer opportunities I have also learned the value of being a team member who values playing their part in achieving a goal. Especially when cooking meals for families at the Ronald McDonald House, each person focused on cooking one part of the meal. By each of us completing our tasks, we were able to make a full meal for many families. Our individual efforts may have been appreciated in their own regard, but the sum of all of our individual efforts was valued and appreciated more than the individual efforts themselves.