The Beckoner Journal- My Days as a Volunteer in a Hospital

~Preface~

     Graduation after high school can be regarded as the judgmental envoy of both the beginning and the end of a path in our life. After this historic event, many of us will start to embark on our own journey in this world and choose paths that we think might be able to enable us to find our destiny. Some started to continue their pre-university educations in private colleges while others are still buying time and potting luck to wait for their examination results, while hoping the government of Malaysia may continue giving away free scholarships for studies through the JPA or getting themselves a guaranteed seat at the matriculation program. 

During this period, many who do not further pursue their studies in private colleges may end up spending their time in part time jobs, helping the needy in social works or obtain a driving license. Seriously, how many would think about not considering well-paid salary jobs to be a social worker or volunteer after graduated from Form 5, while waiting for the SPM examination results to come out, especially if they choose to work in hospitals? That’s right, in the meantime of learning how to play a guitar; I also went all the way from SP, Kedah to Penang to work as a part-time volunteer at the well-known Penang Adventist Hospital. This journal is all about my awesome experiences I had in there.

~Intro~ 

Volunteer Service in Penang Adventist Hospital

Location: Penang Adventist Hospital, Jalan Burma, Pulau Tikus

My Accommodation: My aunt's house

My Transportation: Most of the time I take the Penang Rapid Lines Bus Service but sometimes I got
                                 my relatives to fetch me there

Benefits: Gain a wonderful experience; A letter of attendance that is useful in pursuing medical studies;

                Free Lunch; Satisfaction(If you consider that as a benefit); Spending time wisely 

Day 1

     I woke up at 6 in the morning and failed to fall asleep again because I should have waked up by half past six. I was both nervous yet excited because this is my first day on duty. Actually, I was expected by the volunteer service coordinator and human resource manager, Miss Wong to reach at 9. But the urge to prevent riding over congested traffics in Penang in addition of my excitement and anxiety to start up my job; we departed very early at 7:20am, resulting in an earlier reach at the hospital. It was too early and unfortunately there is nothing to do. So, my aunt who drove me all the way from her house to the hospital decided to send me to the Tzu Chi Jing Si Tang Temple first that was located not far away from the hospital. This was my first time in visiting this temple.

     At around 8:15am, I left the temple and headed straight forward towards the hospital. I was lost in the very first time when I reached the hospital. It took me quite some time to find the volunteer service centre that had already changed location from its former building to the upstairs of the less known Adventist Vision Centre by asking the staffs that worked there. 

Upon entering, I was greeted warmly by Miss Wong who was the Human Resources Manager of the hospital. 

She was expecting me due to the conversation through the phone that day. I handed over her the completed form that I received from Mr Howard Tan. She asked me a few questions about my working time, future ambitions and the reason of appealing to be a volunteer at the hospital. After that, she gave me the volunteer’s handbook and briefed me some do’s and don’ts of being a volunteer. The short orientation completed after she took me for a tour in the hospital. During that time, she taught me many things about the various departments of the hospital and their functions. We chatted all along our way. Then, I put on my volunteer’s vest followed by putting on of my volunteer card and it was the time for me to start my work.

     Monday is considered to be a very special day in the hospital. A small counter that offers hypertension and diabetic screening will be started up in the name of the Malaysia Diabetics Association in front of the registration counter. A diabetic counseling nurse named Sister Chuah runs the counter every Monday. Anyone who wishes to check their blood glucose and blood pressure level can pay RM5 to instantly know the results that are 90% accurate. If you wish to check for your cholesterol level altogether with the other two, just pay an additional RM7 and wait for another 3 minutes for the devices to generate the readings. My mission today was to assist her in recording the screening results of the patients and collecting money as well as selling the other diabetic products the hospital offers.

     During the process, we chatted a lot. She was a nice and friendly person. Luckily I knew how to speak Teochew and Hokkien dialects although it is not that good. This bonus point makes me able to interact with her closer. She shared her thoughts and view points about health and taught me many valuable things. She said that the best way to overcome diabetes and high blood pressure is to drink a lot of water, exercise everyday for a few hours and by practising a well-balanced diet. During the screening, she would not hesitate to give some useful tips to the patients who were high in blood glucose levels, blood pressure and cholesterol level to change their lifestyle. (For your information, blood glucose levels for normal person who fast should be between 3.8 and 5.6. Those whom have blood sugar levels lower than 3.8 are considered to be hypoglycaemic while those on the other hand, whom have blood glucose level more than 5.6 have a very high risk of developing diabetes mellitus. If you have just eaten, make sure when you check the blood sugar level must be below 8.0. Meanwhile, the average rate of blood pressure measured by the sys and dial or contractions and relaxation of your heart must be below or around 120/80. The normal cholesterol level of a person must not exceed 5.2.) 

     When she was asked by me of the reason and the significance of being a nurse, she commented that the job as a nurse was very meaningful as you got to help those who needed your help around. She added that it was also rewarding in the sense that you will feel satisfied as you see the patients you are taking care of gradually recovering from their sickness and injuries. Apart from all of these, she even taught me how to measure the blood pressure, glucose levels and cholesterol levels by using the special instruments that measure the blood content to determine their levels. We also interacted with the patients and give some constructive advices to them. The counter closed after 12.30pm and we managed to raise RM343 from the screening test and the sales of health books and products as a fund for the hospital. At noon, I have a free lunch at the cafeteria as a reward for spending my time as a volunteer in the hospital. I ended my job at 1 o’clock. I can’t wait to continue my day tommorow.

Day 2                            

     Today, I was quite enthusiastic to see what will be entasked for me to work. Hence, I woke up early and reached there at the same time. After Miss Wong arrived, she then gave me my second task of the week- working in the Liver and Digestive Centre 

to assist the nurses there. The Liver and Digestive Centre is actually a small clinic set up by the hospital to examine, detect and treat patients with unseen problems and illness that originated from the stomach and the intestines. They use endoscopy by injecting a fine tracer that travels from a person’s mouth into the stomach and towards the liver to detect problems inside the patient’s digestive tract. For problems inside the intestines, they use colonscopy by injecting the tracer from their anus into the intestines to check for their problems. My instincts told me that this could be fun. I would probably have the chance to see how they perform endoscopy and how they treat the patients and maybe have the chance of doing a hands-on experience with them. My naïve deductions was latter completely shattered by the truth of my job purpose. 

     When I reached the centre, I was welcomed by loads of paper works to do. Yeah, and I seriously mean it-my job for that day is actually doing paperwork for the nurses. What’s the content like? Arranging and clipping new medical record sheets, stamping and preparing patient’s progression notes and labelling patient’s copy folders. I worked non-stop until the Indonesian nurses say “Aduhai, kesianlah budak ini! Dia boring sangat.” Or “Oh, look at the pity lad. He must have felt boring.”In English. Scared that I might be bored, they kept changing my paper works once a while and always told me to go and rest. During the lunch break, I only ate twenty minutes and as I returned to continue my work, they shooed me away and said that I could only come back later after half an hour. Well, you may think that they actually don’t want to treat the volunteers badly as we are actually doing their job, but if you think from another perspective, they are actually very kind in the sense that they consider other people’s feelings.

     I couldn’t say that I didn’t learn and observe anything in this boring department, because I do. While doing paperwork, I actually took glimpses about everything that is happening around me. I saw how the nurses prepared the patients for endoscopy and colonscopy. I even talked with an assistant nurse named Kar Ling about her daily duties and the life as a nurse in the hospital. 

She shared that she was actually from the upstairs and her former task is to take care of the patients in the wards. She switched places with another nurse working in here. Now, her duties are to take care of patients placed in the waiting rooms that had or hadn’t undergone examination. She prefers to patrol the wards upstairs because she got the chance to meet all sorts of people who were sick. Anyway, she still carries on her duty with utmost dedication and love. I also learned what the assistants fill in into their patient’s progression notes. They record their temperature and body weight changes, the source and the most interesting pain intensity scale. This scale is used to measure abdomen discomfort depending on the patient’s facial expressions and the pain of their body. I completed my volunteer service at 3pm and returned home by bus, hoping that tomorrow's task is no mood spoiler and passion freezer…

Day 3

     As usual, I checked in at 9o’clock today wondering what will I do next, while hoping that anything that I am being entasked has nothing to do with paper work. Upon reaching there, I was overjoyed to meet and make friends with 3 other volunteers who worked there. I met Hendrix Cheong, Kok Hau and Jen Juang. 

Kok Hau and Jen Juang are two years older than me. Meanwhile, both Hendrix and I are of the same age. 
All of them are from Chung Ling High School in Penang. They are also members of the Boy’s Brigade in their school. They learn that they could do social work in this place from their seniors. I was actually quite excited to meet them. They were very friendly and easy-going. I quickly mixed up with them.

     Seeing that there were actually four of us here, Miss Wong wanted to give us a more interesting job. She immediately contacted the Development Department of the hospital to inquire them whether they need any volunteers or not. After confirming that they require some volunteers to raise funds to help needy people, she sent four of us to the department.

     The Development Department 

of Adventist is located inside the administration office of the hospital. The purpose of the department is to raise funds, collect sponsorships and manage donations received by the hospital. As we arrived, we were greeted by one of the Development Department’s staff, named Grace.

She told us our mission for that day, which is to collect money for the Heart Patient’s Fund. This charity fund set up by the hospital is to help poor children who suffered from heart diseases whom require an immediate need for surgery and their parents or guardians cannot even afford to pay for a surgery because a heart surgery at least costs RM25, 000. For every 12 children born, one of them will have a problem in their heart. Every year, there are over 3,000 children in the waiting list of performing operation on their heart in the General Hospital. This amount is shared by the Adventist Hospital and the hospital tries much to reduce this number by a few. The hospital hoped to help many unlucky children by collecting donations to enable them to perform surgery and regaining new hope in their future. This is why this fund is created. Last year, the hospital successfully managed to raise funds to help 50 children to get a new life. The hospital wished to help more kids this year.

     After a brief introduction about the fund, we were also being told that we can also sell cute little soft toy puppy coin cases for RM15 each and two for RM20 as an attraction to raise the funds. We were at the same time en-tasked to promote the charity event that was being held at the hospital at its 88^th anniversary at 26 of August. An epic groundbreaking event of the underconstrusting oncology centre, a charity food fair and a mass head-shaving event in the name of charity would be held on that time. Later on, we were given some time to discuss about our strategy and set up our donation target. We were informed that most volunteers managed to rise more than RM1, 000 for the fund and that alone makes our jaw drop. Another group of Westerners from America even managed to collect approximately RM25, 000 that is enough to enable a kid to perform heart surgery in just 9 days despite the language barrier between them and the people here. These two factors are the prime key of burning up our spirits and making us able to turn the impossible into reality…

     After deciding where to go, we set on our journey with good wishes from Grace. We went all around the hospital, from the specialist complex to the wellness centre and from the heart and vascular centre to the obgyn department. 

We used some tactics when approaching with the patients. At first, we declared our purpose of entering a department or clinic by making a verbal announcement in front of the patients. After that, we approach the patients one by one and try to persuade them to donate in the name of charity. Within an hour and twenty minutes, we managed to raise our first round of donation worth approximately a thousand ringgit after being calculated at the Development Department. We were astonished by our findings at that time because it was really unexpected. We actually set RM100 only as our goal because we didn’t expect to receive so much support from the patients. We then decided to have our lunch earlier at that time and rested for a while before continuing our quest.

     Around 12o’clock, we sat around together and planned again. We expected that there would be lesser patients at the afternoon and most patients had already given their donations this morning. Our second round target was not more than RM500. This time, we marked some of the ‘hot spots’ where the rate of patients come and go are faster such as the x-ray ward or the places where the patients are more capable or willing to donate a bigger amount like the heart and vascular centre. We entered each department twice. We even try raising funds in front of the bakery. We worked until 4.30pm and returned back to calculate how much donations we managed to collect. We were again bewildered by our own collections. This time, we collected not only RM1, 000 like the previous, but we manged to collect an astounding figure of RM1, 800! That was 1.8 times more than the previous donations we collected. In total, we managed to collect about RM2, 800 which is more than the figure the past volunteers achieved in a day. In other terms, we accidentally broke the Adventist Hospital’s local volunteer’s record!

Similar as wildfire, the news spread all over the department and everyone was amused by our glorious achievements. The manager of the department, Nancy, herself even wanted to see us. Madam Nancy spared some her time and came to thank us herself. She praised that we had done a great job and were successful in contributing to the society. She even added that we were actually setting a good example to other people. She wanted us to keep on our good efforts and become productive individuals to the society. She even hoped that we could raise the awareness of helping other people in the society and promote volunteerism to every youths of the society. Lastly, she requested us to take a photograph with her and asked for our permission to put this photo into their annual magazine to inspire other volunteers. Grace on the other hand suggested that all of us should keep in touch through facebook. She then took an individual photo of all of us and got our contacts. We were given two tokens of appreciation-a key chain and the charity coin case before we left.

     We went back home at 4.30pm with Hendrix who apparently also goes back by bus. That was the greatest day of the week as a volunteer at the hospital. I felt extremely exhausted but satisfied because together all of us managed to raise so much money for the fund. It really means much when your contribution can actually help out those poor little children to ensure that they may have a brighter future even though it is barely enough to sustain the operation costs for just a kid. At least you managed to do something because every cent and dollar counts! I seriously think that this is the most important lesson that I had learn for this charity event.

 

Day 4

     Still feeling tired of yesterday’s job because I walked non-stop around the hospital for uncountableless times, I reluctantly woke up at the same time. I was feeling not well and I suspected that I was going to fall sick. I had running nose the whole day probably resulted from my lack of sleep. Regardless of my body’s pleas to stop, I deliberately proceed doing my volunteer job. I knew that I can’t quit because I only have two days left before I returned to SP, Kedah to take my SPM examination results and pass my motorcycle driving test.

     I signed in at the same time and found out that Miss Wong had already entered. She asked me the details about yesterday’s fund raising programme and was too amazed by our results. She congratulated us and was pleased of our good efforts. She then arranged me to work at the Central Supplies Department at the second floor of the main hospital building right above the pharmacy. Sadly, today I had to work alone. There are no more volunteers working today. As for three of them, Hendrix will be attending a camp, while Kok Hau and Jen Juang had other personal matters to deal with. Nevermind, I would have to do these all by myself.

     The Central Supplies Department is located inside the second Material Supplies Storeroom. It functions as an entreport that orders disposables and medical equipments that are out of supply, and then distributes the repacked and rearranged disposables and medical equipments to doctors and nurses as well as medical assistants from other departments. Everyday, staffs working in the department will run errands to deliver required inventories to the requesting departments. Nurses and medical assistants also came to the department by themselves to take things that they want. If any of the stocks had ran out, they would immediately inform the Sales Department to refill them.

     What did I do that day? Well, I only did 1 job at that department. I was tasked to pack up the sachets of alchohol disinfectant by 5 in a small plastic packet and 10 packets in a bundle. I had only done until the afternoon because I had other urgent matters to do that day. I called it a day by half past twelve.

 

Day 5

     Today is the last day as a volunteer for this week and probably for this month. Tomorrow I would be going back to my hometown in Sungai Petani and I would only return to Penang after I settled everything that I needed to settle in SP. After four days of volunteer work, I started to like working in here. I really learn a lot of things and met a lot of people. I felt sad when I suddenly realized that I had to leave this place.

     When I reached the Volunteer Service Centre today, I told Miss Wong that I would go back to Sungai Petani for two weeks before I return to Penang again to do my volunteer work. She agreed and hoped that I would get good results in my last year’s SPM examination. She then told me that she was about to put me in the Patient’s Billing Office today, but they said that they had nothing much to do and that would not last until afternoon. So, she told me that if my task finished, I could return to her office and she would rearrange another task for me.

     My first stop today was the Patient’s Billing Office or the PBO. The name says it all. This department deals with issues regarding the payment of patient’s hospital bills under their respective companies and claiming insurance from insurance companies. They also ensure that patients made their payment to the hospital by informing them via the phone. No more guessing and you will know the answer. This time I am going to do paperwork again. I helped them to scan the patient’s individual hospital bill and guarantee letters. I also punched, rearranged and sorted the patient’s guarantee letters according to the category of their company into different files. After I had completed all the given tasks, they told me that there was nothing else to do. Hence, I went back to the Volunteer Service Centre to find Miss Wong. This time, she put me in the hospital’s bakery. 

     The Penang Adventist Hospital’s bakery 

is one of the famous bakeries in Penang that sells a variety of nutritious yet mouth-watering breads and cakes that are suitable for people of all ages. Everyday, customers from all sorts of places, mainly the citizens of Penang will come to the bakery to purchase healthy but at the same time delicious breakfast and tea-time delicacies such as the cinnamon rolls, black pepper bread sticks and wholemeal bread loaves that are full of organic grains and wheat. These are all my favorites and I am sure that it will certainly become yours too! Anyway, other than selling hot and fresh from the oven breads and cakes, the bakery also acts as a convenient shop that sells other basic necessities at the same time.

     This place is one of the busiest departments in the hospital. The three volunteer friends whom I met at this hospital had said before that the work in the bakery is endless. They told me that they had to pack the freshly baked from oven breads and label it with different kinds of information stickers and price tags all the time. Today, I only got to experience part of it. At normal days, the bakery was opened until 8 o’clock at night. However at Friday, the bakery was closed at 5 in the evening. It was already afternoon and there were no more breads being baked at that time. There was only one large tray of cinnamon roll left for me to seal its cover and label. After finishing my task, I asked for anything I could do. Sister Amy whom was in charged of the bakery told me to fold the confectionery paper boxes. It feels like origami to me. I didn’t remember how much that I had folded but I think I folded at least 150 boxes in one and a half hour. I also helped out the customers that are looking for the items that they wanted to purchase in there. I worked for a few hours before I went back to my aunt’s home by bus. I went back to my hometown in SP, Kedah at the next day.

     My fantastic one week long adventure had finally come to an end. At the end of the journey I realized that I had learn a lot of meaningful things during my days in this hospital. I learn how the hospital operates and all the departments behind it that were actually supporting it. Apart from having known the idea and concept about the management structure of a hospital, I was also very impressed by the staffs that work in the hospital. I found out that all of them were actually very kind and friendly. They were very positive and passionate of their job. They didn’t see the job in their hands as a burden but carry it out with sincerity and enthusiasm. All of these make my adventure in this hospital so special. I look forward in returning to do social work in this hospital next time.