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From wayfinding and welcoming patients to supporting care teams in the Emergency Department and beyond, our student volunteers logged more than 40,000 hours in the 2024-25 academic year across all UVA Health locations. A successful fall recruitment effort led by UVA Health Volunteer Services and UVA Community Health means that this year, the number of volunteer hours is likely to be even greater. 

At University Medical Center, we’ve enlisted 425 UVA student volunteers, and there are more than 200 college students volunteering through UVA Community Health in Northern Virginia. According to Maureen Oswald, who has been a Volunteer Coordinator at UVA Health for the past 20 years, the interest in serving at our hospitals is so great that, even with this incredible turnout, we still put students on a wait list.

“There are well over 1,000 pre-health students at UVA alone, and they all want that hospital experience on their resume,” she says.

“We don’t have any problem recruiting,” adds April Beckner, Manager of Guest and Volunteer Services at UVA Community Health. “Within five minutes of opening our application, we hit our max number of applicants. We can only take so many because we only have so many areas we can put them in."

All Hands on Deck for Onboarding Effort

Finding student volunteers is easy, but onboarding hundreds of people in a short period of time is no easy feat. Volunteer Services is fortunate to have support from across our organization. One key partner is Madison House, the nonprofit student volunteer center at UVA. 

“This year, we had 37 student leaders from Madison House,” says Oswald. “They are the ones out recruiting students, leading information sessions, reaching out to our staff partners about available shifts and working with me to manage our Sign-Up Sunday event.”

Sign-Up Sunday occurs each year around Labor Day weekend. The Madison House student leaders join three staff from Volunteer Services to usher students interested in volunteering through the necessary steps for onboarding. Each student is assigned a 20-minute time slot, during which they will:

• Register to volunteer
• Sign up for annual training
• Sign up to get a new badge 
• Make an appointment with Employee Health for health screening

Behind the scenes over the course of the following two weeks: 

• Human Resources supports Volunteer Services with background checks.
• HIT helps students get set up with electronic access and EPIC View as needed. 
• The ID Badge Office creates a couple hundred badges.
• Employee Health spends an entire week doing health screenings, blood draws, and flu shots solely for student volunteers.
• Oswald leads mandated annual training sessions to educate students on key items from our CBLs. 

“It’s just incredible the support we receive to get these students ready to help for the academic year,” says Oswald. 

More Than a Resume-Builder

Once onboarding is complete, students are assigned volunteer shifts based on their skills, interests and availability. “It can be tough sometimes, like piecing together a puzzle,” says Beckner. 

“Not everyone can get the Emergency Department,” says Oswald. “But we try to find the right fit for each student.”

Some of these roles may be behind the scenes, delivering surgical supplies to the operating room, or filling in to complete administrative tasks. Students may be placed on units to support clinical staff. Others may work directly with patients, welcoming them to our hospital or assisting them in the gift shop. But no matter their role, each and every volunteer contributes to our ability to provide quality care. 

We can quantify the number of hours or tasks completed by our volunteers, but the impact on the students themselves often can’t be measured. “We get impact statements from volunteers who say, ‘I started this process because this is what I thought I needed to do to apply to medical school. But I had no idea the gift it was to me,’” says Oswald. “Students come back who have gotten their degree and are now medical doctors and they thank us because they said the biggest benefit for them was the patient engagement. Volunteering helped them tremendously.”

Thanks to the UVA Health Auxiliary, some of these student volunteers will receive more than just experience. They’ll get scholarships to put toward their future education, whether they decide to pursue a health career or follow a different course. “The auxiliary awarded $40,000 in scholarships to 14 students, including both college and high-school students who are current and former volunteers,” says Beckner.

Opportunity for Growth

The student volunteers for this year will be on site at the health system through April, with time off for exams and holidays per the UVA academic calendar. Volunteers in Northern Virginia have a slightly different schedule, fulfilling their roles year-round.

Due to the success of this year’s recruitment efforts, Volunteer Services is prepared to expand and welcome even more volunteers next year. All that’s needed is more opportunities for students to lend a hand. “There are definitely more students interested in a volunteer role during the academic year than spots available to them,” says Oswald. 

This is why Volunteer Services is calling on staff to take a closer look at their work environments. Think about how a volunteer might fill a void or enhance a department. “Have a conversation with us,” says Oswald. “As more areas become interested in having volunteers, that opens the door for even more students to be able to help.” 

The next student volunteer onboarding event will happen in January for the summer session starting in May. For more information, contact Volunteer Services.