'Decline from Ivory Tower' Spurs Hospital Volunteers

Nurses swish up and down the hall in an endless marathon. White coats wheel frightening machines in and out of doorways. Parents habitually come and go during visiting hours. The arrival of dinner wagons for listless appetites is strictly punctual. Everywhere there is white and order: the stiff jackets, smocks, and bandages, the precise reports and charts, the crisp doctors and nurses. Amidst these antiseptic surroundings, in the children's ward of a large metropolitan hospital, spontaneous good times are rare. Someone from outside must bring diversion.

"Yes, the college kids do lots of things with us," the paralyzed 11-years old smiles gently, "but most of all, they just help us to laugh."

The "college kids," who in time have developed an aptitude for making people laugh, work under the General Hospitals Program of Phillips Brooks House. Not all their endeavors involve the production of mere good humor in the five Greater Boston hospitals to which they are assigned. While one Volunteer may waste away the hours playing checkers with paralyzed 11-year olds, another may find himself busy with the most menial tasks in a city hospital accident room. The enthusiasm which College and Radcliffe Volunteers have shown since the beginning of the term, in a veritable renaissance of student concern for the healing of human malady, is regarded by some as the start of a national trend among college students.

Pre-Med Interest

Prime interest in the program comes from College and Radcliffe students definitely intent on applying to medical school. A survey shows that of the 124 Volunteers who comprise the entire project, 61 percent are pre-meds and another eight percent are considering the medical profession. The General Hospitals Program provides a close glimpse of the organizational workings of the five hospitals, contact with surgeons, ward doctors, nurses and interns on the job, and some actual experience in caring for the sick and injured.

The extent of the experience Volunteers get depends largely upon the varying needs and management in each of the five hospitals--Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Mount Auburn, Children's, Cambridge City and Massachusetts General. The last is clearly the most rigidly operated and a machine-like of the five, with the result the MGH volunteers are permitted to perform only specifically-defined, "medically approved" duties. These include answering call lights, reading to patients and helping in the hospital's mail and messenger service. Massachusetts General assumes strict interpretation of the word "volunteer": workers feel privileged to help rather than specially respected for their free services.

PBH Volunteers at MGH form only a segment of the non-trained, unpaid staff of 550 which is directed by a professional volunteer director at the hospital. She coordinates office secretaries, housewives, telephone operators, businessmen, and lately, college students, into an effective clerical and ward detail which takes an immense load off the hospital's budget, not to mention off its staff.

Hospital Sensitivity'

Mary Ruth Wolf, director of the entire volunteer set-up at Massachusetts General, feels that whether College volunteers are busy in the wards, at the telephone switchboard, or in the mail service, they are always acquiring what she calls "hospital sensitivity"--an ability to do the right thing at the right time under both emergency and ordinary conditions. It is this "sensitivity" which the program's pre-meds intently strive to attain.

Carl W. Braun '58, pre-medical student, describes the emergency ward at MGH, where he works once each week, as "an on and off business." In the course of a three-hour stretch one evening, Braun remembers helping with two auto accident cases, one Delirium Tremens, two epileptics, a violent neurotic, and three battling cab drivers who had bashed each other's cars and heads.

Carl A. Hedberg '57, another pre-med, centers his attention on MGH doctors whom he sees in action in the adult polio wards. Hedberg envies the doctors' insights into patients problems," "I must admit I feel frustrated sometimes," he says, "because the doctors do the real work while I just watch."

Smiles for Children

While a spirit of clinical professionalism predominates at Massachusetts General, one of light-hearted efficiency prevails at Children's Hospital. The good-humored approach, correctly geared to keep young polio patients cheerful, has had direct effect on the role of College and Radcliffe Volunteers. The PBH group of 30 accounts for slightly more than half the volunteer force that works under the hospital's Recreational Services Department. Karla Perce '57 one of Radcliffe's 37 Volunteers, finds the surgical wards have "a relaxed but nor chaotic atmosphere. We're always kidding around with the children and no one ever gets annoyed at us." Miss Perce's duties, typical of all the Children's Hospital volunteers, involve playing cards and checkers, sewing, knitting and reading to the youngsters. The work, she finds, "is never a chore. Occasionally in post-surgery cases we have a real problem in cheering up kids. At first they're usually every stoic, and then they'll scream until you think that they'll never stop. But they're much braver than I am."

David Reiss '58, director of the entire program this year and a former volunteer at Children's emphasizes the importance of the worker's adjustment of the perspectives of a stricken child. "Last year, just when I was getting ready to leave one afternoon, a little girl asked me to hand her a box of Kleenex which, she said without pointing, was 'over there'". As it happened, "Over there" for the nine-year old who couldn't move her arms, meant a bedstand less than six inches from her fingers.

Sharply contrasting to the some what consciously carefree atmosphere of Children's is the intense seriousness of Cambridge City Hospital--a typically less wealthy city institution where the cycle of birth, death and all the calamities in between are common daily experience. College volunteers provide the entire supply of non-trained orderlies for the Accident Room where almost every emergency case in Cambridge is treated. The 20 College students who contribute a weekly, three-hour stint do clerical work, restrain violent patients, assist at emergency births and X-rays, comfort the sick and injured while they await treatment, and wheel off the dead to the morgue. Cambridge City Volunteers probably see more of "a real slice of life" than anyone else not formally connected with the medical profession.

Michael A. Cooper '57 recounts his first night of Accident Room work: the first case was dead on arrival, and then, two hours later, a small boy straggled in shortly after he had swallowed a dime. But Cooper says Accident Room business is often more brisk than it was the night of his indoctrination. Less than three weeks ago, two College Volunteers, Robert B. Hilton '58 and Nobbie Smith '57 donated while blood directly to an accident victim because the hospital's blood bank had no B-negative in supply.

Tension with Police

Cooper also notes a measure of tension between Cambridge police, who bring in many emergency cases, and the hospital staff. About a month ago, police apprehended a fugitive by shooting him in the leg. "This guy's set to walk," they told doctors, who promptly hustled him off to bed. Sometime later, the prisoner, who indeed was "set" to walk, eluded his guard and lept from a hospital window. Fleet-footed policemen pursued him and within a block's distance managed to score again--this time a direct hit in the other leg. Stuart Cope, Adams House junior, made the admittance report for the second time, and according to one account, police insisted the itinerant patient be chained to the bed. The guard was doubled.

Most of the Accident Room work is hardly this exciting, Cooper says. The nervous strain of alternating between continuous waiting and concentrated action leaves the Volunteer weary after his three-hour period on duty. "The excitement doesn't leave you keyed up, but just exhausted," he says. "Seeing people in agony, you think that you're as far above animals as they are above inert matter. The suffering person has no defenses left, his inhibitions are gone. Often he seems to lose the dignity that makes him human."

Volunteer aid in hospitals is not a new development. The movement probably first began in 1869 when the Ladies Visiting Committee of MGH organized a skeletal service which was the basis of the Volunteer Department, formally recognized there in 1941. From Massachusetts General and a few other pioneer hospitals, the idea spread, particularly during the two World Wars, through almost all large city hospitals and many community and private institutions. The Phillips Brooks contingent lay virtually dormant until the start of the current term when Reiss, one of 30 Volunteers in 1954-55, decided to reorganize the program. Registration in September jumped form last lear's 30 to a total of 124. Probably one of the most efficient social services in the College, the General Hospitals Program reports only two unexcused absences in the 660 occasions when workers have had hospital duties to fulfill.

Sensitive Direction

The Volunteers' remarkable record can be attributed to two factors; first, their serious interest in the work of medicine, and secondly, an acutely sensitive direction of the immense organization. Director Reiss has the help of six PBH Social Services Committee members. Mary Costanza '58 and M. Joyce Gahm '58 respectively coordinate Mount Auburn Hospital Volunteers and are promoting the new Tufts College extension of the PBH program; John L. Higgins '57 organizes Cambridge City workers, and Morton F. Goldberg '58 is in charge of PBH work at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary; David Chernof '57 directs the Program's relations with the University, arranges Lamont displays, handicraft exhibits, and publicity; and Jonathan P. Marget '58, secretary, handles the vast amount of paper work involved in placing the Volunteers in their proper places in each of the five hospitals every week. Margaret E. Putney '56, PBH vice-president in charge of General Hospitals, assists Reiss in integrating the Program with other Brooks House activities.

In addition to the regular weekly hospital work, Reiss now has four special projects in the planning stage which he hopes will increase the effectiveness of the Volunteers:

1) Volunteers are researching tutoring methods for hospitalized youngsters to supplement the State Education Department's rudimentary "three 'r's" with music and fine arts. They have enlisted the support of the University's Music and Fine Arts departments and the Graduate School of Education, and hope of come up with practical suggestions to the five hospitals by February. The Boston School of Occupational Therapy, affiliated with Tufts, has loaned ten members of its graduating class to help the PBH project.

2) Dr. Lendon Snedeker '25, assistant administrator at Children's Hospital, asked the program to aid in a study of his staff's wasted motions. Children's has recently completed a new wing, and he wants to insure the greatest efficiency in the reorganization and probable additions to the paid personnel. Volunteers will compile statistics for interpretation by the hospital's efficiency expert.

3) PBH General Hospital Volunteers have roused Tufts and Jackson Colleges, in nearby Medford, with the same enthusiasm that has stirred the College and Radcliffe. Reiss estimates that Tufts recruits may well equal the PBH volunteer group and although Massachusetts General needs no additional volunteers, each of the other four hospitals has room for many more. Cambridge City, for instance, has no volunteers at all on Saturdays and during vacations.

4) Reiss looks forward to an official link with the University's Medical School. He sees no reason why the program's pre-med students cannot align their interests with those of the Medical School in some arrangement of practical preparation. He has started preliminary investigation and shortly expects to contact Medical School faculty members.

No one seems quite sure why the Great Awakening in volunteer hospital work has been so abrupt. Both the General and Mental Hospital Programs have sprung to life since September, 1954. Perhaps the most valid explanation for the resurgence of interest comes from Roger W. Brown, assistant professor of Social Psychology and Social Relations head tutor.

Stress of Competition

Brown believes that students feel the stress of individual competition in both curricular and extra-curricular activities. The inevitable result, he suspects, is that more students are disappointed than are gratified. Hence they have turned to an activity which is both non-competitive and altruistic in character. Social progress in the last few years has taken much of the old stuff from campus political movements and hospital work gives students a new form of expression, he says.

Karla Perce of Radcliffe sees the hospital program as a manifestation of the college student's "decline from the Ivory Tower", and the de-emphasis of the seclusion of college life. "Experience in the hospitals gives you a frame of reference. When you see the problems which some people must contend with, it makes the prospect of an hour exam pretty petty."

'A Humbling Effect'

Mike Cooper of Cambridge City's Accident Room agrees: "Suffering is a great leveller. Seeing someone suffer makes you respect him. It has a very humbling effect."

Head Tutor Brown says he would not be surprised to see the college volunteer movement gain momentum nationally. "The same competition and search for moral reassurance exists everywhere," he believes.

Reiss finds that one of the Program's most important aspects is that it puts University students in a different and new context in the Boston community. "It presents to all classes of the educated and uneducated a new slant on Harvard. Students show the city another dimension of themselves. Moreover, a gradual growth of the volunteer idea to other colleges seems entirely likely," he believes.

Regardless of the volunteer movement's future on a national scale, PBH workers have made a significant contribution to community welfare. Their enthusiasm shows little sign of dwindling