“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” (Mahatma Gandhi) Volunteering is more than giving back to a community, it offers personal fulfilment and satisfaction and it is an important part of building your identity. I chose Saint Michael’s Medical Center as my location for volunteering because I was raised in Newark and know that helping hands are always needed and appreciated around the hospitals, food kitchens and schools in the area. I volunteered in the emergency room because it gave me the opportunity to see all types of patients with a wide range of health concerns and a chance to have a different experience everyday. In this paper, I will introduce Saint Michael’s Medical Center and speak about my personal experience while volunteering there. In addition, I will discuss the issues that the hospital faces and how they are addressed. Overall the experience at the hospital brought to life a lot of the things that were discussed over the course of the semester.
Saint Michael’s Medical Center is located on 111 Central Ave, Newark, NJ 07102. It is operated by Prime Healthcare, “one of the nation's leading healthcare service providers.” (SMMC) Saint Michael’s Medical Center can be reached at (973) 877-5000, and their website is https://www.smmcnj.com. The hospital has been serving the community of Newark for more than 150 years. It was established under the Sisters of Charity in 1867 and ran by the sisters and two Irish immigrant doctors. Throughout the years Saint Michael’s Medical Center has been a pioneer in the medical field and has never turned away when the community has needed it. In the late nineteenth century it was a critical component of aiding with the smallpox epidemic in Newark and opened outpatient, surgical services, and a women’s hospital to meet the growing needs of one of the unhealthiest cities in New Jersey at the time. In 1949, Saint Michael’s Medical Center was the first hospital to perform a cardiac catheterization in New Jersey which allowed doctors learn about and diagnose more heart conditions. Saint Michael's has the most up-to-date Emergency Department in the region, it has 39 private rooms, a fast track area and two resuscitation rooms. Physicians, physician assistants, emergency nurses and emergency department technicians all work together to make the ER runs smoothly.
Personally, volunteering in my community of Newark was important to me because it was one of the reasons that I decided on attending RU-N, so I could continue to give back. Saint Michael’s Medical Center was a very convenient location because it is right off of campus, has long history of academic medicine and is very open to receiving students as volunteers. I obtained the volunteering opportunity by going to Human Resources and speaking to Claudia Alves, who is an HR Generalist and coordinator and filling out an application as well as submitting a background check. The process to volunteer included passing a background check and an orientation, where everything from proper sanitation, to human trafficking, to the different codes in the hospital to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act were discussed.
As a volunteer in the emergency room, I was required to bring patients from triage to their rooms or to fast track. I assisted nurses and the cleaning staff in cleaning the rooms, making the beds and preparing the rooms for patients. I went around to patients to ask if they needed a pillow or a blanket and created urine analysis kits. In addition, I was able to shadow nurses and technicians. I have shadowed a pediatrician in the past, however I got a lot more out of volunteering at Saint Michael’s because I got to interact with the patients and feel like I was helping out the staff. Although my group did not work all together at once, I was able to work with individual group members and members of other groups and it was interesting to be able to discuss how we felt about the tasks assigned. I want to become a dermatologist, this volunteer experience relates to my future ambitions because it got me on the path to gaining more experience and becoming a well rounded candidate for medical school. In addition, it helped me see how healthcare providers interact with their patients.
Volunteering at an emergency room in such a diverse city as Newark means that you get to see all types of patients. People of all genders, races, ethnicities, religions, financial standings and ages seek healthcare at emergency rooms. Since many hospitals around the are have shut down, Saint Michael’s Medical Center has been serving a bigger population of people from all over Essex County. During my time spent at Saint Michael’s medical center my eyes were open to the difference between watching emergency rooms on television shows and the reality of an emergency room in an urban environment, like Newark. I witnessed many homeless people coming in, a lot of people who were high on drugs and an abundance of patients who came in for sexually transmitted diseases testing. While I was there the most shocking experience was a code gray, which means that a patient was trying to leave the hospital, it was a man experiencing withdrawal who was checked into the ER, he was handcuffed by police officers and brought back to his room. Seeing that first hand showed me that not all patients are going to accept care or make it easy on their doctors.
Saint Michael’s addresses the homeless issue by providing them with care and trying to meet all their needs, which includes giving them food and clothes. “Newark only accounts for 3 percent of the state’s population, but it’s home to 15 percent of New Jersey residents living with HIV/AIDS.”(Erin Delmore) Saint Michael's has established The Peter Ho Memorial Clinic, where testing, counseling and treatment for individuals with HIV/AIDS is provided. Saint Michael's also offers Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) which is a medicine taken to prevent HIV infection. (SMMC) Out of my entire experience at the hospital, I enjoyed being able to interact with so many different patients and getting shadowing experience from nurses who explained and showed me what a day on the job was like.
Volunteering while being in a class like Intro To Health Professions helped bring to life everything that was discussed in class and by the speakers. Although, sometimes class can get overwhelming because we are reminded of how much we have to do in order to pursue a career in the health field, being a helping hand at Saint Michael’s Medical center showed me that I am on the right path. Although, I do not want to work in the emergency room, I want a role in the health field, helping patients and making positive changes in urban communities, such as Newark. Now that I am near the end of my first semester at Rutgers University-Newark, I am more confident in my abilities and have decided to come into the next semester with a very different approach because of all that I have learned. I am more motivated to pursue a health profession because the hard work will be worth it, and I left the hospital after volunteering satisfied with the little work I was allowed to do which shows me that I will be very happy as a health professional.
Overall, my experience at Saint Michael’s Medical Center was very satisfactory. Volunteering has shown me how important it is to give back, it has taught me what it is like to work in the emergency room and most importantly it has given me the ability to reflect on myself. I will continue to volunteer at the hospital and try out different departments. In addition I will find volunteering opportunities with some of the fields that were spoken about in class that caught my interest, such as pharmacy and physical therapy.