Service Learning: A Pathway to Nursing Empathy

I chose to do service learning because I do better learning hands on and I felt like it would a good experience for me to volunteer. Volunteering helps build character and helps with people skills and with me wanting to be a nurse. Volunteering helps me work on my people skills and how to have empathy for others less fortune than me which as a nurse I need to have when people come into the hospital and they could be having the worse day of their life and they are counting me to be there for them. I went through my church who works with the Houston Food Bank, I spoke with Clara Price who oversees food bank and she told that the volunteering is twice a month on Wednesdays and Thursdays where they package the food on Wednesday and pass them out

Every bag gets 5 cans good, juice, a bag with mixed fruits and vegetables, a bag of rice, a box of cereal, a bottle of belch and a carton of milk and by the end of the day at 2 pm there was at least 90 bags made for Thursday. My supervisor Clara Price told me to come back at 8 am Thursday to pass out the bags, so the next morning there a line of cars around the building. Each person that came to the food bank had a car with the last time they came and the system is set up to where is you came the first week them you can’t come the second week so we must make sure someone isn’t taking away food from someone else. Honestly this experience opened my eyes a lot, when I was helping those people and just seeing a glimpse into what they have to do just to feed their families it makes me feel like I should be grateful for what I have. It showed that I need to more compassionate to others because you never know what someone is going through. Everyone has a different story but empathy and compassion are needed for everyone no matter what and I feel like this helped me with my people skills because when I talked to some of the people there, I felt really at ease and the conversation was easy after I got warmed up and was moving