Professional Activity/Volunteer Service 1

Professional Activity

Maria Hurtado

Nursing 479

Professor Mary O’Connell

University of Arizona

October 7. 2022
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For my professional activity, I volunteered at a senior care home that resides ten

residents. Each resident has a private room with their own private restroom. They all,

however, share the dining room, common area, and shower rooms. My job was to get them

out of bed and ready for the day starting with breakfast at 8am. The residents have a shower

schedule, and I was able to assist in showers and bed baths. They are all on medication

schedules which I was able to pull medications out of the medication room, verify

medications, and assist in medication administration with head caregiver. During exercise

time, I was to gather all residents that wanted to participate to the living area where physical

activities took place. Throughout the day, I was to keep track of medication administration

schedules and make certain I did not miss any of the resident’s medication doses. I was also to

turn bed bound residents every 2 hours to prevent bed sores, and change their briefs as

needed. With supervision, I had the experience to change a colostomy bag which was super

impressive because I had only seen pictures and videos on how to do it. It was easier than the

books explained for sure. I was kept hands on and busy the entire day and reminded me of the

medical-surgical days from second semester. The day went by fast, and I had an exciting time.

The senior care home was in a facility newly opened early August, located on the

North side of Tucson. The facility name is Orange Grove Senior Care. I was to show up at

7am and assisted caregiver her entire 12-hour shift ending at 7pm. It was my choice to stay

the entire 12-hour shift. As I mentioned earlier, the experience was one that reminded me of

the medical-surgical rotation except with more residents to care for. It meant so much for me

to be able to assist at this facility because it gave me great satisfaction of knowing that I was

plenty of help for the caregiver and offered diligent care for the residents. The residents were
Professional Activity/Volunteer Service 3

very thankful and appreciated all my help and that meant so much to me. The residents asked

me to come back soon, and that to me was the greatest impact of my experience. I feel I made

a difference the entire day for both staff and residents. The manager thanked me for all my

hard work and offered me to come back if I needed to complete more volunteer work. It was

definitely a valuable experience and would like to go back to visit the residents.

Throughout the experience, I was reminded of the work nurses do on the floor. It was

remarkably similar to hospital floors except without all the technology, bells, and whistles.

The care that all the residents required throughout the day was not as intense as what I am

trained for, however, the care and compassion was entirely there. The undivided attention,

care, compassion, dignity, and respect throughout the experience is one that I will continue

utilize throughout my nursing career. I genuinely enjoyed the activity because I was hands on

the entire time which kept me busy the entire day. For that reason, I do recommend this

experience because you get the feel of every resident need, learn about their history, reasons

they are there, their different diagnosis, various levels of care, their capabilities, their code

status, and truly get a feel of staying on top of it as a real nurse would. Of course, it was not as

intense as what I have experiences in the past, but the care they all required, including hospice

patients, was similar as to the care a nurse is trained to do.