Anita+Fritz

its like an event! **
 * MGH: The Main Lobby

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) was founded in 1811; the original hospital was designed by the famous American architect Charles Bulfinch. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United States, and the largest in New England. Massachusetts General Hospital was founded in the 19th century and was intended to care for the poor. MGH is a teaching hospital and a biomedical research facility. MGH is a teaching hospital because it provides clinical education and training to future and current doctors, nurses, and other health professionals. MGH has 905 beds and admits over 45,000 patients a year. MGH is located at 55 fruit street Boston, Massachusetts it’s a few blocks from the Charles River but across the street from the MGH train station. The hospital has seven other facilities in Boston one in Back Bay, Charlestown, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, Waltham and Danvers. Right in front of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) all you see and hear are serine’s going off, patients waiting for there rides to go home and security directing traffic and a cluster of people walking in every direction of the hospital. The construction workers are banging on machines around the construction site, some driving up and down in tractors and bulldozers. The hospital is expanding so there adding on a new building right in front of the main entrance to the hospital which is right next to the emergency room. There’s so much noise that it drowns out your own thoughts. The walk way up to the entrance of the hospital is filled with wheelchairs along side the wall of the hospital and then you have patients lined up waiting for the rides to go home also other patients coming in to be admitted in to the hospital. MGH is a very busy place, but you don’t have to enter the hospital to know that you get a full preview from the main entrance.

After you make it through all the sirens, crowds of people and noise you enter into the main lobby which the same kind of action without the banging machines, sirens. The main lobby is the main entrance to the hospital. At eleven o’clock in the morning theirs still crowds of people, this time its volunteers their stationed at there desk in the main lobby; some standing some sitting it’s about five of them with one on the telephone. You know their volunteers because their all wearing a peach color jacket with the MGH logo printed on it and khaki pants. They all seem to be about the same age 19-20yrs old and their all in college. The young lady on the phone is taking calls so she can go and pick patients that are ready to be discharged from the hospital to be taken home. Each one of the volunteers takes a turn in answering the phone and when they get the location of the patient and name they take off. When all five volunteers are gone they set the answering machine so the secretaries can leave a message regarding any discharge patient’s. The volunteers not only help with discharging of the patients but they all so carry newspapers to the patient’s and leave wheelchairs on the floor for them as well. Now there are many volunteers throughout MGH but these tasks are just for the volunteers in the main lobby. As I continue to look around the main lobby there’s security walking around not doing too much and saying very little but there greeting the visitors and doctors as they enter the main lobby. There are quite a few police officers as well there all apart of the security team at least eight of them are in the main lobby. Because there’s such a big crowd of people in the main lobby it requires the same amount of security. They are there to make sure that everything runs smoothly with the patients, visitors and the employees they don’t want anything unpredictable to occur that may put anyone in the hospital in danger. The location of MGH is in a nice part of Cambridge I think down the street from Beacon Hill, a few blocks from City Hall of Boston. Even though it’s located in a nice area and a well respected community a lot of homeless people and drug addicts sit around the lobby; I don’t think they come just to hang out they come to get treatment. Some hang around longer than others; one of them even has an open bottle of liquor drinking. The security takes notice of this and two of them approach the man one in a suit the other in a police uniform. The man is so drunk he can’t even speak when there talking to him their asking him question and his words are coming out slurred. The men help him up and carry him out of the hospital which was in the best interest of the people sitting in the main lobby. Later on about three o’clock left of the station where the volunteers are stationed there a very long line at the pharmacy counter. The pharmacy which is also located in the main lobby but more off to the side it wouldn’t be the first thing you see when you enter. The line is so long it wraps a round a pole making the letter S with the amount of people standing line for the medication. Around three o’clock is when the hospital is at its busiest most of the patients are discharged and are sent to the pharmacy for there prescriptions. Watching the people in the line some seem aggravated because of the wait or their child’s whining and its getting on there nerves. Other feel like they been in the hospital to long and just to get the medication and get out. The pharmacists seen over worked themselves and don’t want to deal with the attitudes of the customers. To the right of the volunteers sits the clerks to the hospital that directs any and everyone that doesn’t know where there going. They help the visitors when there trying to find a love one or friend they let then know he/she is on this floor, room so on. Only two clerks sit at this station they too answer the phone but it’s to direct them to the proper floor. Their uniform is black and white shirt black vest and black pants completed the MGH logo on the vest. They also must have theirs name tags on at all time or they can not sit at the front. When you’re the first contact that people see when they enter the main lobby you have too look you best. After a full analysis of the main lobby at MGH I concluded that it would not be consider a normal person utopia. For those who like a chaotic atmosphere then the lobby would be their utopia. I feel that the main lobby is more like a quest, the people who enter whither it may be a doctor, guest, patient whoever it maybe there only there for one purpose whatever that may be and once it if fulfilled they move on to something else. Once you step foot into the main lobby you never know what you’ll find or what’s taken place but be sure to enjoy the show.