Hillsdale pre-med students may soon have additional opportunities to volunteer as phlebotomists at Hillsdale Hospital through GOAL’s new Hospital Volunteering program.
The GOAL program, run by junior McKenna Good, will train students to work in Hillsdale Hospital’s outpatient department drawing blood.
“They needed students to be trained in phlebotomy for a couple of weeks, and then to be employed at the hospital,” Good said. “So that’s kind of what we’re doing right now: getting training set up.”
Hillsdale College and the hospital are working together to provide this opportunity to students interested in pursuing medicine after college.
“I’ve shadowed doctors, so I’ve been in the hospital setting before, and I’ve seen patients and those kinds of things,” senior Mark Miller said. “But this is a good first experience to actually work in a hospital. Also, I don’t like needles; I’m hoping this will get me acclimated to that.”
Miller said he heard about the program from Associate Dean of Men Jeffrey “Chief” Rogers, who encouraged him to fill out an application on the hospital’s website.
“We got over 20 students that responded that they were interested in doing the week, a few weeks of training, and then becoming employed,” Good said.
The Hospital Volunteer program lost many opportunities due to COVID-19 regulations and is now seeking to rebuild the program, according to Good.
“Short staffing was a big thing,” Good said. “That’s why I want to get students in there. But the difficult part was that, with the restrictions on COVID-19, they didn’t want a lot of outsiders in the hospital when they weren’t needed.”
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the program had as many as 40 students involved and volunteering at the hospital during the semester. During the fall semester of 2021, only 10 students were able to volunteer.
“They weren’t letting as many students in, I thought that now that we had COVID-19, we had a vaccine, and society was getting back to normal, especially at Hillsdale, we would be able to offer more opportunities,” Good said. “I was surprised that, in the fall, there weren’t a lot of positions that students were able to get into.”
Due to the pandemic, hospitals across the nation are facing staffing shortages, and many hospital staff members have struggled.
“After the COVID-19 years, I worked in the healthcare field in Ann Arbor, so I had kind of seen how bad it was with short staffing and whatnot, I wanted to see how we could get back in and help,” Good said.
A hospital vaccine mandate also went into effect Dec. 5, 2021, and has affected staffing shortages across the nation, although it has not deterred student volunteers, Good said.
“I was fearful of losing a couple of the students that had already been there because they did such a great job, they’re very motivated and always dependable,” Good said. “I was glad that they all came back.”
Good revived the Hospital Volunteer program in the spring of 2021, hoping to bolster morale among nurses and to provide students with opportunities to volunteer at the hospital.
“I thought it would be a great opportunity to be in a leadership position to serve the community, especially healthcare, because, after the COVID-19 fiasco, it was nice to give back to them and to help them out,” she said.
Good has put on college events, including writing letters of thanks to nurses working at the hospital, and providing coffee and trick-or-treat baskets for them.
“My hospital coordinator there said that there were a couple of nurses who cried when they got the letters just because they don’t always get the appreciation that they deserve,” she said.
The program favors junior and senior volunteers in hopes of providing them with experience before graduation.
“I got involved because I thought it would be a really good opportunity to see that side of the healthcare world,” junior Mark Sprague said. “I’ve worked in nursing homes and shadowed at clinics, but never really in a hospital.”
Good said she hopes to extend the program and get more students involved at the hospital through opportunities like phlebotomy, as well as in the emergency room and lab.
“I just want to give back to them and help out, especially in our little Hillsdale community where we don’t get the big health care system assistance that other hospitals do; we need the extra help in serving our little community,” Good said.