Today, October 7th, 2016, was my first day at Sparrow volunteering. As expected I had some difficulty getting around the hospital. With my luck I got a call that brought me to the Sparrow professional building (SPB) which I hadn’t been around yet.

This is a part of the new cancer center that is being built right across from the main hospital building. I went to go pick up the patient from the Cardiac Recovery Unit (CRU) and their spouse had parked in the parking ramp connected to the SPB. Luckily it wasn’t too difficult for me to make it to them since I had already been up to the cardiac department a few times before then. The real issue was getting to the SPB. I communicated with the patient and spouse that it was my first day working and that I had not been to the SPB. They understood and helped guide me there while I pushed the patient in the wheelchair.

That experience reminds me of the core competencies of service orientation and oral communication. I was able to tell the patient and the spouse that I wasn’t familiar with that part of the hospital and I showed that I was willing to still go with them to transport the patient to their car. This is just one of many examples of how important the core competencies are to patient care.

For the rest of the day I took calls and tried to get myself to learn as much about department locations, hallways, elevators and more that I could in Sparrow Hospital. Even with the calls I had (I’m not sure what is busy and what isn’t yet) and my shift being 4 hours instead of the normal 3, I know it will take a couple weeks to get a good knowledge of where things are without looking them up.

 

 

 

 

 

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