VolunTeen
EDUCATION
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Working in a medical field can be a dream of many, but not everyone has seen the ins and outs of working in the field. I am a volunteer for a local hospital where I get to interact with nurses and doctors and learn about the medical settings. I work at this hospital two days a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) to understand what it feels like to be a nurse. Tuesdays I work in the IRU/ Patient Rehab unit, this is where patients going under therapy are placed. At first I thought this was going to be a boring unit and a place where I would not like to be, but slowly I realized this unit was not as bad as I had assumed. In this unit, I get to interact with patients, learn about their stories while helping nurses with cleaning the rooms, passing out waters, picking up food trays, and taking out the trash. The IRU consists of various different age groups, so I get the opportunity to gain insight onto various perspectives of life. Thursdays I work in the discharge unit where in I bring patients down from various units of the buildings who are ready to go home. The smile I see on the faces of those patients who are finally able to go back home is the highlight of my day. Being able to see how the sound of going home lightens up their mood is just hard to encompass on one word. The discharge unit is one place where you see patients the happiest. I call the discharge unit “the happy place”. When someone mentions “hospitals” the emotion attached is usually negative, so seeing patients have a bright smile on their face when I walk into the discharge unit is a great feeling.