My Voluntary Work

As I have decided to study medicine, I figured that voluntary work may be helpful to me in gaining some useful skills which I might be able to take forward into a medicine career.

The first step I took in trying to find voluntary work was researching the internet for places where I could do voluntary work e.g. At local care homes, charities, hospitals etc... Unfortunately due to the time when I was free to do some voluntary work, so were other students (after exams), this meant that a lot of local charities, care homes and hospitals were already full with people doing voluntary work, and most of them simply didn't have enough space to allow more students to also come and do voluntary work.

However, I carried on looking and eventually found a nursery placement. The nursery in which I did my voluntary work (and where I am still carrying on after the summer holidays) is called Zaytuna nursery. The manager at this nursery was kind enough to allow me to do some voluntary work with them once a week, I was not able to do more than this as I was still attending classes in college and also due to the nursery staff having different shifts, which made it slightly difficult to be able to work more days a week.

During my voluntary work, my main role was working with the young children and showing them some basic ways of using ICT equipment, I was able to do this as the nursery had just got some interactive whiteboards and new computers installed for the children to be able to use - Therefore, the manager had asked me to if I would like to take on this activity with the children each week, as I had some ICT knowledge and was also studying ICT at A level I agreed to take this role on.

As I was working with the children most of the time, I had to be patient and be able to communicate well with the children, in order to help them learn some simple ICT skills. I had to work with the children at different levels, as some children were quick to catch on to what was being taught (as they may have been using computers, laptops, game consoles etc.. at home), however other children were not very quick to pick up the skills, this sometimes made me a bit frustrated, as I had too keep explaining the same process again and again to the children. However I kept calm as I understood that this was not an easy task for the children to grasp.

I think that the main skills which I gained and improved were skills such as: being able to keep calm - This may be a key skill for a medicine student or a doctor as they would have to deal with many obstacles in their daily routine e.g. hard to deal with patients, frustrating amounts of work from day to day basis, long work hours etc... I also improved my skills of being patient and I believe that this would also be a necessary skill in the day to day life of medicine. My main skills which I gained and improved on would be being able to take on a caring role - I tried my best to work in an environment where I could improve this skill, as in my opinion, caring for others is almost key for being able to study medicine, and I have recognised with in my self, that I am able to embrace the caring role and not shy away from this.

In conclusion, I think that doing my voluntary work in a nursery environment was probably as good as doing it in a care home, with a charity or at a hospital, as I have still gained the set of skills which I desired. Although I have done, and am still proceeding to do voluntary work at Zaytuna nursery, I will continue to look for voluntary work at a care home as well, so that I can gain skills of working and caring for people of different age groups.