Hospital Volunteers Lead the Way

When outpatients at Summa Health in Akron, Ohio, were frequently getting lost on their way to appointments on the main hospital's campus, volunteers stepped in to help. The hospital's Volunteer Services team developed a hospital guide volunteer program—Volunteer Voyagers. This program has exceeded expectations: In 2015, 34,949 patients were escorted by volunteers for wayfinding. To recruit volunteers and make the program more fun, Volunteer Services provides pedometers to the volunteers, or voyagers, so steps taken while escorting patients are tracked each day. The total number of steps of all volunteers are added together and converted into miles—2,000 steps equal one mile. Volunteers choose a “destination” goal and now have “walked” from Akron to Miami, New York, Canada, California, Spain, Hawaii and other places. Voyagers celebrate reaching a walking goal with a themed party featuring food and music from the destination, along with a speaker discussing health and wellness issues. The Volunteer Voyagers program benefits patients, provides a valuable service for the health system and actively engages community volunteers, who receive health benefits too. For more information about Summa Health's Volunteer Voyagers, contact Angela Smith, system director, Volunteer Services, at smithang@summahealth.org.

April 10-16, 2016, is National Healthcare Volunteer Week. For more information, view a Health Forum video on the role of hospital volunteers in health care transformation.