Word: mgh
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Dates: during 1955-1955
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...Volunteers get depends largely upon the varying needs and management in each of the five hospitals--Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Mount Auburn, Children's, Cambridge City and Massachusetts General. The last is clearly the most rigidly operated and a machine-like of the five, with the result the MGH volunteers are permitted to perform only specifically-defined, "medically approved" duties. These include answering call lights, reading to patients and helping in the hospital's mail and messenger service. Massachusetts General assumes strict interpretation of the word "volunteer": workers feel privileged to help rather than specially respected for their free...
...Volunteers at MGH form only a segment of the non-trained, unpaid staff of 550 which is directed by a professional volunteer director at the hospital. She coordinates office secretaries, housewives, telephone operators, businessmen, and lately, college students, into an effective clerical and ward detail which takes an immense load off the hospital's budget, not to mention off its staff...
Carl W. Braun '58, pre-medical student, describes the emergency ward at MGH, where he works once each week, as "an on and off business." In the course of a three-hour stretch one evening, Braun remembers helping with two auto accident cases, one Delirium Tremens, two epileptics, a violent neurotic, and three battling cab drivers who had bashed each other's cars and heads...
Carl A. Hedberg '57, another pre-med, centers his attention on MGH doctors whom he sees in action in the adult polio wards. Hedberg envies the doctors' insights into patients problems," "I must admit I feel frustrated sometimes," he says, "because the doctors do the real work while I just watch...
Volunteer aid in hospitals is not a new development. The movement probably first began in 1869 when the Ladies Visiting Committee of MGH organized a skeletal service which was the basis of the Volunteer Department, formally recognized there in 1941. From Massachusetts General and a few other pioneer hospitals, the idea spread, particularly during the two World Wars, through almost all large city hospitals and many community and private institutions. The Phillips Brooks contingent lay virtually dormant until the start of the current term when Reiss, one of 30 Volunteers in 1954-55, decided to reorganize the program. Registration...