Patient Access: Shift One

My first shift while doing patient access was very slow. I was told that it had to do with the time of my shift. My usual shift will be on Tuesdays from 2pm to 5pm. I guess their are not many patients in the afternoon.

My supervisor are Mary and Nina. They work at a service desk and they bring patients down to surgery if there are no volunteers available.

During my first shift I got to shadow Mary to make sure I knew what was expected of me. After that I was supposed to have it memorized. It is a rather simple process.

Mary or Nina will give me the chart of the patient.
I check the patients wristband to confirm they are the right person. (I would not want to send the wrong person into a specific surgery.)
The patient follows me down to PreOp.
I check the patient in if their is someone at the front desk of PreOp.
I take the patient to their assigned bed and leave their chart on a table(next to their bed) for their doctor
Then I go to the desk at the exit of PreOp to let them know that the patient is at their bed.

For most of my shift their is a lot of free time.

Patient Access Training

This week I met up with a person named Mike for a training session on what I would be doing. Mike is also a volunteer at BWH and he attends the Evening School at Harvard.

The session did not take too long. He first told me about the basic duties of my job. I would be escorting patients, who were scheduled for surgery, down to the surgery room. There were not any patients at the time to have a practice run, but Mike did show me the correct procedures for Patient Access.

Introduction to the Program

After doing so many hours of Central Transport at BWH, I qualified to continue at BWH in their Medical Career Exploration Program. When the details were explained to me I saw it as an opportunity that I could not pass up. The Program is a commitment of nine months or more. It requires that you do a certain amount of hours in Central Transport, and then a certain amount of hours in Patient Access Services. After that you get to choose any department in the hospital in which to volunteer in. They Volunteer Services will o their best to put you in a department of your interest.

Currently I am at the Patient ACCESS stage of the program. I look forward to completing this stage so that I may volunteer on the Psychiatry department at BWH.