We Can’t Overlook the Importance of Volunteers in Health Care

Volunteers are a large part of the medical industry. They may not have the training that doctors or nurses do, but they are still invaluable — even if most people don’t think twice about them.

Why are volunteers so important in medicine, and what can medical practices do to attract qualified volunteers and retain the ones they already have?

What Do Health Care Volunteers Do?

These volunteers are individuals who work in hospitals and other health care facilities and aren’t on the hospital’s payroll. They donate their time and any associated skills to help local hospitals and, by proxy, their local community.

What each volunteer does precisely will depend on where they are assigned. While they don’t care directly for patients, they can do everything from transporting people who have already been moved by nurses into a wheelchair or wheeled hospital bed to socializing with them to changing linens.

Volunteers are vital because they take on some of the responsibilities of patient care that would otherwise be relegated to nurses. It allows medical professionals to spend more time taking care of their patients and less time doing inventory and answering the telephone.

While some of these responsibilities may be taken over by robots and artificial intelligence in the future, there is no replacement for someone who is willing to take time out of their day to talk to a patient who might not have any other visitors.

How to Become a Volunteer

What is involved in becoming a volunteer? Most hospitals are constantly looking for volunteers, and have programs in place to train them. New volunteers are given a free flu shot — which is essential for those helping during flu season — and may even be offered meal vouchers to help them pay for lunch in the hospital cafeteria during their volunteering hours.

Hospitals offer onboarding training for new volunteers as well as continued education, training and workshops to ensure they are up to date on any new or changing hospital policies.

Many volunteers also use their hours as a tool to gain clinical exposure, which looks good on a resume or an application to college for a degree in medicine.

For people who are interested in becoming a health care volunteer, the best place to start is at local hospitals. Speak with someone in the facility’s human resources department to find out whether the facility is bringing in new volunteers and what requirements there are. Standards are usually the same, but if there are any differences, this would be the best place to find out.

Retaining Health Care Volunteers

What can medical organizations do to retain health care volunteers? The first step is to determine why volunteers are leaving. Many former volunteers blame a lack of engagement with their peers and a toxic work environment within the hospital as reasons why they left the field.

Many of these variables are also cited when nurses or doctors choose to leave medicine behind in favor of another career path.

Volunteer retention starts with the facility’s recruiting strategies. A hospital needs to focus on creating the type of environment volunteers want to work in. That might include offering more flexible shifts, since many volunteers are doing this kind of work around their day job or school schedules, or more advancement opportunities for successful volunteers.

Looking at the most successful or longest-lasting volunteers can give these facilities an idea of the kind of change they need to make to their recruitment programs.

Providing comprehensive training can also help hospitals retain their volunteer staff.

Don’t just hire a volunteer and throw them to the wolves without any training. Good training creates successful volunteers and makes it easier for hospitals to keep the ones they already have happy.

Creating a volunteer culture in a medical facility can also help with retention. Strong leadership isn’t just important for doctors and nurses — it is also vital to entice individuals to volunteer at a facility and keep them there.

Health care volunteers play a vital role in the medical industry. Hospital administrators can’t afford to overlook it.

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