Volunteering at Hospital

Recently, I went along for the first time to do voluntary work at my local hospital. This was an introductory session to tell me what I was going to be doing when I come in in the future. I was shown around the hospital (it's fairly small) and was told I would primarily be helping on the rehabilitation ward, where I will be talking to patients and helping generally on the ward e.g. meals.

During this first visit I spent half an hour talking to a patient on the ward. She had been moved from a large hospital to this smaller one and told me about how she'd found the whole experience. This gave me the valuable experience of seeing how a patient reacts to the care they are being given. Sometimes the patient can still feel lonely and wish for more - this is where volunteers can help. This is something I hope to do a lot more of in the coming months!

The matron also taught me how to take blood pressure, pulse, temperature and measure oxygen levels. Within 2 hours of arriving at the hospital I had taken these readings on a patient and was told that during busy times I may be asked by the nurses to do this. This was a very hands-on experience that I really enjoyed and hopefully will be able to do more of in the future!

I plan to go back to the hospital at least once a week and hope to do more of what I've done already!

BioChem Labs

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Biochemistry labs at a large hospital nearby. I saw all the various machines used to analyse substances, such as urine and blood samples. Although most of the machinery I did not fully understand, there were some more low-tech methods that I know about from school, such as chromatography. I saw how haematologists can view individual red blood cells and from this diagnose cases such as sickle cell anaemia and how the hospital priotised blood tests on how urgent they were (generally the tests from the ICU in the hospital were more urgent than samples from nearby GP surgeries).

Perhaps the thing I found most interesting was the toxicology lab. Here they analysed urine samples from local sessions aimed to help addicts with drug dependancies. From analysing the urine it is possible to see whether it has been spiked by the patient in an attempt to significantly reduce the proportion of metabolites from drugs present. One example is how the patients would spike their sample with methadone to make the metabolites of the crack cocaine less obvious.

I found the whole experience interesting, especially as I saw an area of a hospital I had not previously experienced and saw the science that goes on behind the scenes.