Denise and Maria Elizabeth

Denise Duran and Maria Elizabeth Hernandez, Long Island College Hospital: These girls are engaged in deeply challenging and energy consuming work -- they're volunteering in a hospital. This is difficult work even without the added demands of academic assignments, internship timecards, and me hovering around asking questions and snapping photos. Denise and Maria have thus far been working in the Elder Care program (HELP) set up and run by Dr. Concha Mendoza, a geriatric specialist who oversees the department and runs her own private practice at LIC. She is the girls' primary mentor but unfortunately is extremely busy on Tuesday afternoons.

On a typical day, the girls arrive at the hospital which is located near the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, and proceed to the volunteer office where they clock in to the hospital system, pick up their volunteer jackets, and receive their meal vouchers. Then they head to the main hospital building up to the fifth floor nursing ward where most elder patients stay. Dr. Mendoza and the girls communicate via a large notebook with patient names, notes and observations. The girls pick up the notebook every Tuesday and find a new list of patients and room numbers to visit. They have a list of questions they can ask, but generally they are there to provide warmth and friendliness to people who have few visitors and are in a great deal of pain. They'll also occasionally travel around the entire floor distributing water, ice, and snacks. In general, this aspect of their internship is neither glamorous nor overly exciting. During my visit today, I quickly remembered how strange it feels to walk around a hospital as a healthy person peering in on the world of sickness, powerless to do any healing.

Denise and Maria and I discussed why it must be so hard to be a really good nurse and why so many nurses often seem busy, stressed, or burnt out. Just to maintain one's own level of happiness and positive outlook walking around the sterile hallways is difficult enough, but then on top of that to make others feel better, healthy, more alive, even loved. Wow, what a task! More power to these girls for getting this first hand experience in the health care "industry."

Maria and Denise have amazing access to health care professionals. They are in fact free to introduce themselves to nurses and doctors, make connections, and ask questions that will provide them knowledge and insight on the field. Today, the girls sat down with a nurse manager on the fifth floor and conducted a 30-minute interview. Next week, they'll have the same opportunity with Dr. Mendoza, and if they want, they can make a practice out of it. Also, next week, they will both start spending two of their four hours in other departments. Maria will go to the emergency room where she will serve as an interpreter/ greeter and Denise will assist the nurses in the neonatology department. We decided today that they would both benefit from more diverse experience and the volunteer coordinator, Ms. Abreu was happy to oblige.

On a final note, next week the interns will make their way over to the college library where they will begin talking with the librarian about LICH's 150 year history and locating useful resources for the paper. Neither Denise nor Maria had asked about a library, but luckily while we were meeting in Dr. Mendoza's office, a fourth year medical student (see picture on right) happened to stop in and suggest visiting the library. This just goes to show that if you put forth just a little of your own genuine curiosity and effort, all the missing pieces of the puzzle will begin to fall into your lap. Of course then it's still up to you to put the thing together. But at least now, I'm confident that the LIC interns have excellent resources at their fingertips and the potential for an outstanding internship.