12:55 - I'm early AND I've eaten lunch; what a change!
1:06 - The first thing I see when I enter is a lack of wheelchairs. Time to steal some.
1:30 - In the end I only stole 2. More on this later.
2:02 - I made an epic fail today. Will confess later
2:25 - Obligatory lab question
2:48 - Note to self: Find out where the Transplant Clinic Pharmacy is
3:14 - Someone spilled some coffee; leading cause of injury as an outpatient is falls. Of course I clean it up with great haste.
3:38 - It has become quiet now. Actually a busy day today; makes things less boring in the long run.
So the hospital has new volunteer vests; dark blue in color as opposed to the teal ones before. The way the new system works is that instead of everyone having their own vest, there is a rack with many vests and differing sizes. We take our name tag (Arranged alphabetically in drawers) and put it on a vest. Then at the end of the shift, we put the name tag back and throw the vest in the laundry basket. This way, no one can "steal" someone else's vest, and hospital hygiene is maintained! This means I can spill as much sauce as I want (Not like I would do that on purpose though).
Due to the repeatability of my work, frequent updates are no longer viable. So I've resolved to only update around every half hour, and when something abnormal happens. Then when I come home, type something about it.
The first thing was the wheelchair situation. There were no wheelchairs when I entered the building; this is obviously a problem, so I went around looking for some. I bumped into my volunteer coordinator who told me to go to Emergency to get some. The trek from my current location to Emergency took about 10 minutes, and the trip back another 15; the latter took more time as lugging around wheelchairs is no easy business. The most disappointing thing was that no one used them today. Hard work for nothing; that is the life of a volunteer.
The second thing is probably the first time I majorly messed up. A family asked me where the Children's Hospital was. From my basic knowledge, I redirected them to B.C. Children's Hospital, which although isn't far from this hospital, is still quite a drive. I later found out, after much digging through my folder of information, that there is something called the "Child Care Center", which was probably what the family was really looking for. This is why you have to be specific with names; a misnomer like that can easily result in faulty directions. I feel really bad about it, but there isn't much I can do but learn from the mistake and make sure it doesn't happen again. It's all part of the volunteer process.
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