Hello! I hope you all are well! For the past two weeks I was a VolunTEEN at Baptist Medical Center South. I was looking forward to this opportunity and was hoping it would allow me to get more hands-on experience of working directly with patients and to see how the hospital functions. Each week you were assigned to a different unit. For the first week, I was assigned to unit 3B which is a patient care unit. The floor was primarily for women recovering from surgery but there were a few men as well. This unit was very slow paced. I had a partner and our daily tasks consisted of delivering water, updating charts outside the patient’s door, checking if the patient needed anything, and completing various small tasks for the nurses. Unfortunately, the nurses didn’t have much for us to do in this unit, so me and my partner found ourselves with a lot of free time, sitting and doing nothing. This was a bit disappointing. However, the most exciting part of the day was when it was time for vitals, so we were able to shadow the CNA’s when they did their rounds. Here we were able to see actual healthcare professionals interact with patients and see them using different equipment. This routine continued for the whole week. During the second week, I was assigned to unit 7D. This was another patient care unit, but the patients were more varied this time. It was still patients recovering from surgeries, but they had a bit of everything with regards to patient’s demographic and health conditions. The tasks in this unit were the same, delivering water, random tasks for nurses etc… It was slightly more active than unit 3B but not by much. There were a lot of patients with dementia however, which were interesting to work with. Overall, my experience was less than optimal but I think it was because of the stations I got assigned to. Some of the did get other VolunTEEN’s were assigned to the ER or different labs where they were able to observe different procedures and even surgeries and be a lot more active and involved. On the other hand, kids who were assigned to patient care units, like I did, expressed that they didn’t have a lot of things to do most of the time and were underutilized.  During graduation, the supervisor wanted to hear feedback from all kids. A lot of other VolunTEENs had a similar experience to mine and said they found themselves without anything to do and bored. Granted, we were not qualified to work with patients besides delivering water and taking food trays, but I think it would be nice if Hospital should assign the teens to units where they are able to actually do more things, observe healthcare professionals in action, and get hospital experience. One teen proposed that instead of assigning a teen to patient care units for both weeks, volunteer coordinator should assign volunteering at the patient care unit for one week, and then give teens something different, for example ER or labs. With this set up, VolunTEENs would be able to see all kinds of health professionals and experience a lot more of hospital’s functions. Another teen suggested that they should assign the teens to CNA’s or nurses who are actually willing and eager to be shadowed, because it was obvious that some healthcare professionals showed very little interest in explaining what they were doing and why, or just having someone shadowed them in general. Overall, it was a good experience. I got 35 service hours, but it was underwhelming. I was expecting to be very active and get a lot of hands-on experience, or at least be able to shadow a lot, but I didn’t. I would still recommend it to people as it gives you actual time with the patients and in a hospital, but I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would, but it’s probably just because the assignments I got weren’t very good. That’s all for now, bye!