VOLUNTEER HOSPITAL HELPERS RECEIVE UNIQUE EXPERIENCES

Harvard volunteers for orderly work at the Massachusetts General Hospital have experienced everything from diaper folding to ambulance riding since they joined the staff. After they answered the call of the short-handed staff early this spring for orderlies to assist in carrying on routine work, the men were led on a sightseeing tour of the large, many-winged building, through the different wards, kitchens, laboratories, and operating rooms.

Smartly outfitted in white jackets, they settled down to folding gauze, bandages, and diapers in the supply room, learning how to make beds without disturbing the patient, and performing other useful services around the sickroom. The orderlies were soon armed with bottles of rubbing alcohol and tins of talcum powder to give massages and dust patients' bed-sore backs. One duty for each man was to make the rounds of the dark corridors with a nurse and hold her small, blue flashlight as she checked on her patients.

A new volunteer was called into the receiving room to help calm a resisting little boy who was vociferously trying to explain to the dozens of other shouting members of his family why he did not need an appendectomy. The orderly succeeded so well that he had to accompany the boy to the operating room and hold his hand.

Two other orderlies were drafted on their first night to ride with an ambulance driver to fetch an 83-year-old woman who had broken her hip. The inexperienced, and for the most part unsuccessful driver dashed wildly about the streets of Boston. When they finally arrived at the correct street, by trial and error, they encountered difficulties in removing the heavy, wheeled stretcher from its intricate moorings on the floor of the ambulance, and in twisting it up two flights of tortuously curved Victorian steps. After they accomplished the ticklish task of lifting the old lady to the stretcher and carrying her down, she added much to their woe, when nearing the hospital, by insisting that they all return immediately to rescue a pan of stewing prunes from her stove.

In another instance, 15 volunteers were given a chance to watch a brain operation. As the delicate steps exposing a pulsating cerebrum proceeded, one by one the men left the room, some violently ill, until only four remained. After only two night's work, one pre-med student changed his vocational plans, it was revealed by his more cold-blooded companions.

The orderlies expressed nothing but admiration for the nurses, who give comfort to the patients and have their confidence as no one else in the hospital. The volunteers were struck by the large amount of work done by these public servants. In addition to their seriousness of purpose, the nurses were characterized by their youthful beauty, and love for jitterbugging.