According to University Hospitals Portage Medical Center Volunteer Services Coordinator Stephanie Montgomery, there has been no shortage of local students eager to volunteer at the Medical Center, which has allowed the Hospital’s annual summer volunteer program to flourish, as it just celebrated its 15th anniversary.
“The program has definitely grown since we started the program 15 years ago,” Montgomery told The Weekly Villager on Aug. 14. “We had 30 or 40 students that have grown so this year we hosted our biggest year ever. I do think it has a good reputation, our own staff like to have their kids participate in the program, and we have a lot of local college and high school students that come back from year-to-year.”
The Hospital’s annual summer volunteer program recently wrapped up its 10-week program, with 65 local students volunteering their time this summer.
UH Portage Medical Center Manager of Volunteer Services and Community Relations Sandy Haskell added that a significant percentage of the student volunteers this summer were returnees from last year’s summer volunteer program.
“They are able to come back next year, and we will give them the first right of getting assignments,” Haskell noted. “What is nice about our program is that we do have a number of students who will come back who have had such a good experience.”
The Hospital’s summer volunteer program enables students to get opportunities to volunteer in areas that they expressed the most interest in, whether it was assisting with patient transportation, providing help to the lab technicians by running blood reports or lending assistance at information desks or even helping with other administrative activities.
“We have some students that come to volunteer that are not necessarily interested in health care,” acknowledged Montgomery. “We have volunteers in our gift shop; we have volunteers that help in the office. We try to offer things that are health care related but also patient satisfaction and customer satisfaction and making our hospitals a more welcoming place.”
Haskell said that previously the volunteer schedule did not align with students’ schedules given their time dedicated to their studies over the course of the school year.
“The summer program allows them an opportunity,” she noted. “We find high school kids that are so busy with sports, extracurricular activities and as much as they would like to volunteer after school, they don’t have the time or their parents maybe can’t drive or something etc., so the summer program gives them an opportunity to have the experience that they can’t have during the regular school year.”
The popularity of the summer volunteer program has helped the Hospital attract more volunteers throughout the year, as Haskell noted that during a regular year the Hospital’s volunteer core consists of over 300 students.
“We offer a good experience and can also do in a timely fashion,” she added. “There is a definite process of students that volunteer at a hospital go through a rigorous process in that they have to not only submit an application and go through an interview, they have health requirements, they have to get their GB testing, they have to do online orientation and welcome meetings to learn about the Hospital.”
The strength of the Hospital’s annual summer volunteer program has created another branch of volunteers, called the Junior Auxiliary Volunteers, which was formed four years ago by Montgomery and Haskell.
“University Hospitals Portage medical Center has an auxiliary organization,” Haskell said. “Their mission is to support the hospital by raising funds and they do that through special events. They run the gift shop here at the hospital while we decided about four years ago to start a junior auxiliary, as a way for students who are not quite 15-years-old yet, but it was open to any high school students or college students.”
Just this year, Haskell said the Junior Auxiliary Volunteers raised funds to stock a patient comfort cart, where volunteers can bring a cart to the nursing ward and offer additional comfort items to patients.
The Hospital’s annual summer volunteer program’s long tenure has served as a reflection of local students’ aspirations to join the health care industry, and it has allowed the Hospital to recruit the next generation of health care workers.
“We have no shortage of students who are looking for experience, good experience and exposure to the health care field, so I think it has been easy for us to keep interest in the program,” Montgomery said.
