Everything you learn interning at a hospital

Hospitals. Some people see them as plain, boring, white walls full of sick people and doctors that are in and out the door spewing handfuls of words no one understands. Some people only know them for the harsh and painful memories that reside maybe in a certain room. Others, see the drama and jokes of our favorite tv shows like Scrubs, Greys Anatomy and House. So what is it like in a hospital when you’re not the patient? As a volunteer at Saint Anthony’s hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, I, like a new intern in every great episode of Grey’s Anatomy, got a first hand look.

As a volunteer at Saint Anthony’s, you go in with the opportunity to work in any part of the hospital you would like as long as you volunteer one hundred total hours. Additionally, after working in one spot for three to four weeks, it’s encouraged to switch around and try some new part of the hospital. Knowing that I wanted to go into the medical field and having seen every hospital related tv show, I was excited to jump in and start to see what actually being part of the hospital system would entail.

On the job

The first two months I helped out in the PACU, which stands for Post Anesthesia Care Unit. This was a place patients would be wheeled in immediately after surgery to slowly wake up. Nurses would tend to them and adjust pain meds to wean them back into reality. It was always my job to update charts and keep track of where patients came from and where they were going. I also helped keep track of which doctors went with which patients, allergies and medications that they needed, and setting up IV bags.

It was crazy how many patients would be in and out within the hour and the variety of surgeries and medications that were necessary for them to recover, not to mention how each patient woke up after anesthesia – that was sometimes very funny. Every person responds differently to coming out of anesthesia. It’s like when someone gets their wisdom teeth out and next thing you know you’re receiving video after video of them saying ridiculous things that make no sense at all. That is exactly something that could happen in the PACU. Some people come out of it saying weird random words or thinking a nurse is someone in their family. The nurses in the PACU are saints for some of the patients that they deal with. It’s not always a pretty wake up from patients, but sometimes those made for the best stories.

For a month or so after the PACU, I worked on the medical surgery floor with patients who were recovering from surgeries that usually had about a weeklong recovery period. On the floor, I usually did small jobs like getting things for patients or stocking rooms with supplies. Mostly as I went room to room, I typically had seen every patient at least three times simply by going around and asking if they needed water or blankets or resupplying their rooms. After many encounters, it was easy eventually striking up a conversation with any patient who wanted someone to talk to. Usually by the third or fourth time I was in someone’s room they would get that smile on their face and say “Oh hey! You again,” which led to small talk that patients easily latched on to. Now as the day came to a close and it would get towards the end of my shift, the nurses liked me to go in the front room and be a greeter for the families that came in to see patients. At that point, any time a family would ask for a patient, I definitely knew who they were talking about.

Working on the med surgery floor had more simple jobs that didn’t let me interact with nurses and doctors, but it encouraged me to socialize with patients. During this time I met some of the most amazing and sweetest people than I’ve ever met in a span of such few hours. It was always sad for me when they would finally go home because sometimes I would get attached. It was especially hard when someone was alone and didn’t have much family, usually older people, because I didn’t want them to go back to having no one to talk to while they recovered at home.

A story to remember

Something happened to me while working the greeting desk one day and I will never forget it. It was small, but it made me realize what it really meant to be involved in the medical field.

That day I was working on some paperwork at the front desk when a family I had seen before came into the waiting room. It was easy to tell it wasn’t anywhere close to their first visit. There was a grandmother and her 10-year-old grandson, who was playing a game on an iPhone while his grandmother made a call. The older woman talked into the phone explaining how her daughter, age 40, had been sick with mild symptoms and suddenly suffered a stroke. The cause had taken weeks to identify. The woman then began sobbing into the phone as the little boy nearby, started crying too. I noticed the screen on his phone had gone dark, dead.

Without a second thought, I stood up from my desk, sat down next to him and, while the grandmother was occupied, I coaxed him into playing a game on my phone with me. He was hesitant at first, but eventually started playing with a small shy smile on his face. A few minutes later his grandmother got off the phone, thanked me for letting him play, and left the room. Right before I was about to leave, the grandmother came back out to the waiting area alone. She approached me and, before I could say anything, hugged me! She vented to me about how hard it was to see her family go through these struggles and thanked me for getting her grandson to smile. She gushed that it had been much too long since the family had done so. The woman hugged me one more time before leaving.

Think about it

In life you can do a lot of things, but the biggest thing anyone can do, doctor or not, is to be a positive figure in people’s lives. Now this might seem preachy or cliché, but working in a hospital, no matter the job, no matter how small the part you might play can be, you will affect someone’s life.

I never got to meet very many doctors or watch crazy surgeries, but the amount of people you meet every day is incredible. My Grey’s Anatomy moments weren’t saving lives or learning valuable things about the hospital (although there were so many things I learned) but they were moments where I got to make someone smile or listen to a story of a patient with no family. They were getting background stories of how nurses got to be where they were or listening to doctors and nurses joke and laugh with patients. There are a lot of little things that go unnoticed in hospitals and those were the things I learned to watch for and hold on to.

So for anyone who wants to get involved with the medical field, volunteering at local hospitals close to you can be a very eye opening experience. I went in thinking I was going to be involved in a ton of medicine and came out with a new perspective entirely. It’s not all about the medicine – it’s about the people who you inspire and the people who inspire you along the way.