Volunteering by Nurses

I've got to confess that I'm not a big fan of nurses doing nurse/charity volunteering. Not because I'm opposed to volunteering, but because most of the time nurses volunteer, we end up doing piddly little tasks that untrained or minimally trained folks could do just as well. Work situations usually don't have us doing piddly tasks because it makes no sense to pay a nurse $$ per hour to do the mundane little medical-sounding chores that nurses usually get roped into in volunteer situations.

(The example I always think of are mass blood pressure screenings, which is one of the most worthless ways anyone can spend their time. The folks getting the readings usually are there because it's free, and they do not pay much attention to what they're told about their BP. Nevertheless, it's a wildly popular thing to have, and you can usually count on finding long-suffering nurses parked around tables at shopping malls waiting for the mall walkers to pony up to the table to get the arm squeeze).

Nurses who want to volunteer -- as a nurse -- should make sure that the volunteer task is one that will use their skills in a productive, useful way. Otherwise, it's a lot better to simply work a little more, and give cash.