Hospital Volunteer
Hospital volunteers work without regular pay in a variety of health care settings, usually under the supervision of a nurse. Most hospitals train and supervise volunteers through a specialized non-profit organization called an auxiliary. The director of the auxiliary is usually a paid employee of the hospital.
A hospital volunteer is sometimes nicknamed a candy striper. This name is derived from the red-and-white striped jumpers that female volunteers traditionally wore in the United States, which resembled stick candy. The name and uniform are used less frequently now.
In the United States, volunteers' services are of considerable importance to individual patients as well as the health care system in general. Some people volunteer during high school or college, either out of curiosity about health-care professions or in order to satisfy mandatory community service requirements imposed by some schools. Still others volunteer at later stages in their life, particularly after retirement.
Famous quotes containing the words hospital and/or volunteer:
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)