Students seeking to earn a certificate of completion or transcript designation are required to complete volunteer and job shadow hours exposing them to medically related work.
HIPAA Requirement
When you are completing your job shadow and volunteer hours please remember that you must follow the rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
You are not allowed to share information about the patients or residents in any way in which the person can be identified. This includes names, parts of names, any other unique identifying characteristic, geographical identifiers, or dates that are directly related to a person. This especially includes social media. Please do not make any social media posts about your job shadow or volunteering hours. You may tell others about your experience but keep your information generic and leave personal information about others out of your story. You must understand, most of what you see and hear in a medical setting should not be shared with others. If you wish to take a picture, make sure you get permission from the facility and from anyone who may be in the picture. The person giving you permission must also be able to do so, meaning they must be an adult and of sound mind.
Even if you do not mean to, you can unknowingly share confidential information by talking about your experience. For example, if you tell your friend that you were doing volunteer hours at the Sage Cancer Center in McHenry and you saw Ms. St. Clair there, you might be accidentally telling your friend that Ms. St. Clair has cancer. Although you did not directly tell your friend that Ms. St. Clair has cancer, you have violated HIPAA by sharing personal information.
You are not allowed to share information about the patients or residents in any way in which the person can be identified. This includes names, parts of names, any other unique identifying characteristic, geographical identifiers, or dates that are directly related to a person. This especially includes social media. Please do not make any social media posts about your job shadow or volunteering hours. You may tell others about your experience but keep your information generic and leave personal information about others out of your story. You must understand, most of what you see and hear in a medical setting should not be shared with others. If you wish to take a picture, make sure you get permission from the facility and from anyone who may be in the picture. The person giving you permission must also be able to do so, meaning they must be an adult and of sound mind.
Even if you do not mean to, you can unknowingly share confidential information by talking about your experience. For example, if you tell your friend that you were doing volunteer hours at the Sage Cancer Center in McHenry and you saw Ms. St. Clair there, you might be accidentally telling your friend that Ms. St. Clair has cancer. Although you did not directly tell your friend that Ms. St. Clair has cancer, you have violated HIPAA by sharing personal information.
Job Shadow
Note: If a job shadow is longer than 2 hours, the additional time may be counted towards volunteer hours.
Volunteering
You must participate in “medically related” volunteer experiences. They should be at least 5 hours in length. “Medically Related Volunteer Experiences” means that what you are actually doing while you are volunteering should be medically related.
Volunteering at a Medical Facility such as a hospital, clinic, veterinarian, nursing home, pharmacy, etc is fine. Hours that would not count include organizing a banquet for a cancer fundraiser – even though it’s a cancer fundraiser, what you are actually doing it not a medical experience. Volunteering in a cancer wing of a hospital and speaking with patients would be much more of a medical experience.
Organizing a blood drive is not; however, working the blood drive next to the Phlebotomists and helping them during the day would be fine but sitting at the table checking students in and out would not be. Collecting medical supplies to send to Veteran’s overseas is not but visiting a Veteran’s hospital and speaking with patients would be.
While everything listed above is great and can count for other things like HOSA, NHS, and Silver Cord you should be able to see that your medically related volunteer hours need to truly be in medicine or healthcare.Volunteering hours may be split up over several days and multiple locations.
Every 5 hours of volunteering counts as 1 point in the Extra Curricular category.
At least 1 Point (5 hours) is required for both the Transcript Designation and the Certificate of Completion.
Volunteering at a Medical Facility such as a hospital, clinic, veterinarian, nursing home, pharmacy, etc is fine. Hours that would not count include organizing a banquet for a cancer fundraiser – even though it’s a cancer fundraiser, what you are actually doing it not a medical experience. Volunteering in a cancer wing of a hospital and speaking with patients would be much more of a medical experience.
Organizing a blood drive is not; however, working the blood drive next to the Phlebotomists and helping them during the day would be fine but sitting at the table checking students in and out would not be. Collecting medical supplies to send to Veteran’s overseas is not but visiting a Veteran’s hospital and speaking with patients would be.
While everything listed above is great and can count for other things like HOSA, NHS, and Silver Cord you should be able to see that your medically related volunteer hours need to truly be in medicine or healthcare.
After a Job Shadow or Volunteer Experience
You are required to fill out the following forms for your job shadow and volunteer hours:
You will then scan these forms and link them to your verification slide at the end of your exit presentation that you will give in February of your senior year. You do not physically turn in the forms.
Additional Information
We expect students to make an effort to set up a Job Shadow and volunteering experience on their own. While it is not specifically prohibited, we encourage students to shadow and volunteer with people that are not related to them. We want students to reach out and make these contacts on their own. It will be a different experience shadowing someone you have never met versus shadowing your aunt or any other relative or friend.
After students have made several unsuccessful documented attempts to reach out to facilities using several different methods (email, phone call, stopping by in person), then the student is allowed to reach out to Ms. St.Clair to get help setting up a job shadow or volunteer experience.
Anything that is required for a class (i.e. CNA, Sports Med 2, Youth Residency) CANNOT be counted as a job shadow or volunteer hours, however, if optional opportunities are given for these classes and are not counted as part of the class, these optional/additional opportunities can be used as your Medical Academy job shadow or volunteer hours.
Ms. St. Clair will email students throughout the year about possible job shadow and volunteer opportunities that are brought to her as well such as Valley Hi Nursing and Rehabilitation and Alden of Huntley.
After students have made several unsuccessful documented attempts to reach out to facilities using several different methods (email, phone call, stopping by in person), then the student is allowed to reach out to Ms. St.Clair to get help setting up a job shadow or volunteer experience.
Anything that is required for a class (i.e. CNA, Sports Med 2, Youth Residency) CANNOT be counted as a job shadow or volunteer hours, however, if optional opportunities are given for these classes and are not counted as part of the class, these optional/additional opportunities can be used as your Medical Academy job shadow or volunteer hours.
Ms. St. Clair will email students throughout the year about possible job shadow and volunteer opportunities that are brought to her as well such as Valley Hi Nursing and Rehabilitation and Alden of Huntley.
