But Echuca Regional Health could not run without them.
Here is the story of an ERH volunteer.
VIDEO: Pat Rifat shares her story
WHEN Pat Rifat moved from sunny California to Echuca with her husband Dr Rifat almost 10 years ago, it felt like her world was turning upside down.
Not only was she leaving friends and family on the other side of the world, but her 30-year career as an emergency room nurse as well.
Without a nursing licence here in Australia, continuing in that beloved vocation was no longer an option.
So while her husband Dr Rifat went to work as a GP at Echuca Regional Health, Pat struggled to fill her time.
That’s when she discovered volunteering.
“I figure if I can volunteer, I can still help people. And it also helps me have something to do during the day,” she said.
Pat volunteers in the ERH emergency room, helping the nurses by putting supplies away, making the beds and emptying the laundry.
But above all, she’s there to offer support to patients and their families.
“You get to see so many people when they’re having their worst day. And it might be your good day but it’s not theirs,” she said.So when it all hits the fan – and in the emergency room, it inevitably will – Pat is there to offer guidance and support.
“Instead of being busy grabbing medicines, pushing things into the IV and listening to the doctor, I can pay more attention to not so much the patient at that time but the family,” she said.
“Because a lot of the time the family is just standing around freaking out and they don’t know where to go, if they’re supposed to be there, where they should sit, what they can do.
“This way, if it’s a really traumatic situation, I can usher them off to the family room, get them something to drink and kind of explain what's going on because the nurses don’t have any time to do that when they’re with the patient.”
It is Pat’s quiet behind-the-scenes work that often makes a world of difference.
“There was a lady the other day – such a nice lady – who was having trouble placing her husband who has dementia. It’s really sad because he’s starting to get violent at home,” Pat recalled.
“She was in the family room just sobbing. So I sat with her, made her some tea and told her about my mom who had Alzheimers and the trouble we had. But I told her it was going to be okay, they’d find a place.
“The more I talked, the more she calmed down. I gave her my phone number and she called the other day to thank me for sitting with her and told me she’d found a place for her husband in Bendigo and things were much better.”
It’s heartbreaking and heartwarming stories like these that keep Pat volunteering at ERH.
“It’s good to know you've actually helped someone,” she said.
“Because now I’m not home helping with my own family, or actually nursing, I feel like I have no point in life any more, I feel like I’m not useful. So this way it gives me some use that I can help somebody.”