Alex Bryan's Blog

FINALLY, I had my first actual volunteering session at Children’s Hospital. It actually turned out to be much more involved than I thought it would based on our previous meetings. At my interview, Dr. Billman had vaguely referred to my looking at what projects were available and then choosing what suited me best. When I got to his office on Friday though, he basically said that there was a project which was staring him in the face at the moment that I could take right then and there. For this project, I would design a code-blue training simulation for the hospital, a code blue being when a patient’s life is in danger (for example a cardiac arrest). Needless to say, taking this as my first project would not only allow me to improve the safety of a great number of patients from just one assignment, but would also be amazing on any sort of medical school application or interview. So I took the project, and was then taken into a meeting which was just starting as we got there.
As I have said before in previous blogs (and was reminded of at the meeting), I absolutely cannot discuss the topics brought up during this meeting. As a general impression though, I can say that I did feel a bit out of place. Basically, there were a bunch of heads of departments at this meeting all dressed up and discussing important issues related to my assignment, and then there was me in jeans and a sweater. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I just sat there quietly and took a few notes, and then at the end reviewed what I had learned with Dr. Billman. Writing about the experience is a bit frustrating given the restrictions put on me, but what I can say is that I’m very excited by the opportunity I have been given and really hope I can continue with this project next week.