TRAVERSE CITY — Betty Plough has been at home in a hospital for as long as she can remember.
As a little girl, she walked the halls alongside her mother, helping push the candy cart from room to room. That early introduction to the rhythm of hospital life never left her. Decades later, Plough turned that childhood familiarity into a career in Munson Medical Center’s pathology lab — and a volunteer commitment that this week reached a remarkable milestone: 10,000 hours.
“I’ve always liked the hospital atmosphere,” Plough said.
She began formally volunteering around 2003, starting at the Regional Trauma Center before moving to Munson Manor and eventually settling into the emergency department. Three days a week she works her paid job doing clerical work in the lab, a closed area with little patient contact. Volunteering, she said, fills a different need.
“I like interacting with the patients and helping them and doing what I can to help the staff,” Plough said. “That’s what the volunteer part is for.”
Her duties in the emergency department range from transporting patients and running lab samples to cleaning rooms between visits and keeping the blanket warmer stocked. None of it is clinical, but staffers say the work is essential. Without volunteers handling those tasks, nurses and technicians would have to step away from patient care to do them.
“It just kind of relieves them a little bit,” Plough said. “Even though it may not sound like much, to them, it’s important.”
Some of the most meaningful moments, she said, involve the youngest patients. Plough and her volunteer partner purchase Hot Wheels cars and Barbie dolls with their own money to hand out to frightened children waiting to be seen. A play area in the front of the department stocked with toys and puzzles helps pass the time during what can be hours-long waits.
“When the little kids come in, of course, they’re scared,” Plough said. “We are able to give them each one of those to kind of distract them.”
For adults, the comfort can be as simple as a warm blanket or a few minutes of conversation with someone who asks if they need anything.
Plough has watched the department transform over the years, from a small ER tucked off the main lobby, where four patients shared a room divided only by curtains, to the current facility, where every patient has a private room. The work itself, she said, has stayed largely the same.
So has the reason she keeps showing up.
“I think you feel you make a difference,” Plough said. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘Thank you for being here.’ It just makes it so worthwhile. We might not feel like we’re doing much of anything, but maybe to somebody we have. And that’s all that matters.”
For anyone considering hospital volunteering, Plough’s advice is simple.
“I would tell them to do it in a minute,” she said. “In the hospital, that’s all you do is help people. And it’s very rewarding.”