Personal Narrative: The Process Of Volunteering

Click, clack, click, clack. I was fourteen when I began volunteering at the hospital around the corner from my home. Volunteering was a schedule filler at that time and not thought of much more than a blocked off period in my weekly schedule. I was able to begin volunteering because of a new in place block schedule with shorter Wednesday’s set by the county administration. I was a volunteer courier that traveled throughout the hospital delivering items to the various units. I was able to elementarily learn the varying processes of some of patient departments. The memory that would have larger impact than I could have imagined was the clicks and the clacks of stilettos as they came down the hall of off-white vinyl flooring.

I had been growing
Details of her clothes were past personal recall because it was her acumen and authority that would adumbrate my future healthcare. Her name is unknown but I was told she was an administrator for the hospital and everyone with their squeaks either chose to abscond or accolade this figure as she made her way around the varying hospital units.

No one in my family was employed in the medical field so I began to seek out more information and about healthcare and a volunteer recruiter for Tidewell hospice came to my high school. I did not know much about hospice care at 15 but I enjoyed the business card that stated ‘Free Hugs for any consenting human being’ from Hospice of Southwest Florida. I thought this was humorous and took the business card home for a discussion at the dinner table.

At fifteen the idea of hospice care seemed abstruse and the staff played an instrumental role in my understanding of disease process and attempt at understanding the grieving process. I began rounding for socialization with patients in nursing homes and their homes and additionally in the hospice house. Concurrently, I enrolled in the medical academy at my high school and was offered a full-time job through on the job-training academy as a Medical Records and Data Coding tech at Bradenton Neurology. This was my first real fulltime job, and was my first in depth
While I was familiar with this diagnosis from my exposure at Bradenton Neurology my experience as a caregiver was minimal. At the encouragement of my mother, I chose to continue my bachelors and looked for online programs to maintain my status as a caregiver. I began an online distance learning program with University of West Florida in Pensacola, FL in 2013. Then I discontinued volunteering with Tidewell Hospice and after five years I then became employed as an Admissions coordinator 2013. The support system from Tidewell was invaluable during my time as caregiver, a fulltime employee and a fulltime distance-learning