They are the student volunteers in the Polyclinic
15th November 2019 - The students who offer part of their free time to be close to the patients of the Polyclinic have exceeded 100. In fact, the loneliest, the oldest, the most fragile need daily help with meals or simply support or company to go through the delicate moment of hospitalization.
This is why for years, in addition to the volunteers of the Friends ofUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, University students also engage in volunteer work in the University Hospital. A service born almost spontaneously with the support of the Chaplaincy but which over time has increasingly taken on an organisation. Carmen Santise, a final year Medicine and Surgery student, manages the WhatsApp group through which she plans the shifts of the students who take turns in the different departments, thus ensuring constant coverage at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“This year – he explains – the group has grown considerably, exceeding 100 members, with the contribution of students from all the university's degree courses. For those starting out in volunteering, we make sure they are accompanied by the most experienced. Thanks to the indications of the Clinical and Assistance Directorate of the Health Professions, we direct our presence in the departments where there is a need and possibility to provide service".
“This volunteering gives me so much, every time I enter the ward it enriches my heart and soul – writes one of the volunteer students after the weekly shift. A patient's story made me realize that no matter how hard life may put us, we must always face it with her smile. The same smile with which she is facing her health problems”.
An enrichment, the one told by the volunteers, which also manifests itself in the relationship between the different members of the group who gradually became a family. “When we met to prepare little Christmas gifts for the patients – says another girl – I felt part of something big, of a real family. Being away from home and family for the first time in my life, this is 'super important' to me."