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.