Student Health Center offers more volunteer positions

Applications are online and due later this month.

By Andrea Kszystyniak

Published April 6, 2009

The Student Health Center announced a series of volunteer positions for students interested in pharmacy, primary care and physical therapy.

The positions, slated to open at the start of the next academic year, require students to commit at least four hours a week to service at the center. Applications are due at 4 p.m. April 15.

SHC spokesman David Dale said the positions give students an opportunity to get experience in the health field.

"We can provide them with experiences that they wouldn't get with normal classwork," Dale said.

Dale said the positions would also provide students with the opportunity to network and meet with health professionals who might be able to offer them a position after graduation.

Second-year volunteer Amy Griffith said she has learned how to take vitals and other skills at the center.

"I went to Costa Rica and Nicaragua this summer for a medical mission and it was really helpful that I got to be in a clinical setting already," Griffith said. "I was prepared and knew the basics for diagnosing and how to interact with a patient."

Griffith has worked on various health center teams, as well as in the physical therapy department. She has had the opportunity to go in with nurses and take vitals, weigh patients, give tests and run cultures.

"I had the opportunity to see how a lot of different medications worked," she said.

Freshman Sasha Rowles said she felt experience working at the health center would help her to get an internship.

"It's really hard to get internships because there's so many people trying to compete for them," Rowles said.

Despite the necessity of work experience, in the midst of layoffs across the country and a campus-wide hiring freeze, it has become difficult for students to get paid experience in their future careers. Dale said the volunteers are not there to provide the health center with free labor.

"We don't want students to think that instead of being seen by a doctor, they're going to be seen by a volunteer," Dale said. "We have doctors and nurses and a full staff committed to providing for our students. The volunteers are just there to get experience and see how the health center functions."

Dale also said the programs has benefits for the center's doctors.

"When our providers take on their role here, they know that they are part of a learning community," Dale said. "I think they get fulfillment and enjoyment out of knowing that they're teaching."

The teaching aspect of the volunteer internship is what most interested freshman Megan Lambert.

"This position could teach me how to better my people skills, how to address really tough situations like giving families bad news and how to deal with the emotional stress of the job," Lambert said.

She said getting advice from experienced doctors would be valuable in the field. She said she would be "learning from people who have been in the field for awhile and reinvented ways to do things that make them easier and quicker to do."

Griffith said volunteers help the health center function by providing an extra set of hands.

"Even if I wasn't in patient interaction, I knew what I was doing was helping the health center run more smoothly," Griffith said.

The volunteer application is available here