Anna Lee ‘20, Amanda Jones ‘20: Many Episcopal Academy students spent their summer down at the beach, playing sports or traveling the world, but two juniors, Minjee Cho ‘19 and Bella Calastri ‘19, spent their summer interning at two top area hospitals.
Cho spent the summer working at the Einstein Medical Center in Elkins Park and Montgomery. Cho explained that she got involved with Einstein Medical Centers because she was “already volunteering at Montgomery and doing little concerts and stuff for patients and I heard about the medical internship and I was very interested.” Cho said that she “always wanted to become a medical professional” and applied for this program with the hope of furthering her medical aspirations. Cho said that she was given the opportunity to “learn a lot… I was able to shadow surgeries and watch catheterizations and see doctors complete colonoscopies.” Cho said her favorite part of the summer was her interaction with patients. I did this thing called patient ambassador… I was able to spend time talking [to the patients] and getting them food if needed. I could transport them and take them outside just to make the overall hospital experience [for them] a little bit better.”
Calastri was also eager to be a part of a hospital program, saying, “It really appealed to me to volunteer and be in the hospital environment and see how it works, so I can be exposed to experiences like that.” Calastri discovered the program through “a friend of mine, who had done it the years before… Paoli hospital has a really good volunteer program.” At Paoli Hospital, Calastri had the opportunity to be a part of the patient transport team, “an organization with junior and senior volunteers. Basically what we do is we transport the patients from their rooms to be discharged or to go take a test like an x-ray. We do that to help out, and so the nurse staff doesn’t have to do that.” Like Cho, Calastri also cited patient interaction as her favorite part of this experience. She said that “One time, I was with another girl and we were transporting a man back to his room. He had a granddaughter with him and she was very sweet and very scared of the stretcher. The man was so nice. Another volunteer came by and started playing the harp. The man started to sing along and then his granddaughter started singing along too and it was really, really, cute!”
Overall, both Calastri and Cho explained that they had a “very good experience and… would recommend it to [their peers].”