At both Princeton Medical Center and Bayshore Community Hospital, I interacted with a variety of patients. I learned to provide patients with anything that they may need and to uphold the ideology that patients always come first. Even though the endless runs to the ice machine, the reorganization of rooms and the wheel-chairing of patients between wards were trivial tasks, seeing the smile of patients and knowing you made their lives a little more comfortable was most fulfilling. With that being said, the large part of my hospital volunteer experiences did not teach me about communication issues and isolation that patients face in their personal lives.
Working at a local re-entry task force in Trenton, A Better Way, also taught me the benefits of helping others by providing economic empowerment to less fortunate individuals. Attending personal Men Group meetings gave me the opportunity to interact with individuals of different socioeconomic statuses. However, hearing individuals’ financial hardships did not make me cognizant of isolation and personal issues they