Volunteer Community

One of the discourse communities that I am a part of is the Sutter Health Volunteer community. Specifically, those who work at the Women's and Children's Center (WCC) building in the Maternal Newborn unit on the 8th floor. This community has many responsibilities, goals, and shared ideas. The Volunteer Service Description document lists out all the tasks that a volunteer must perform in this community. Moreover, this document shows some of the responsibilities and objectives of this community. Everyone that is a part of this discourse community has this document and would use it to figure out what tasks they are able to perform as a volunteer in the Maternal-newborn unit. The Maternal Newborn volunteer community uses medical terminology which is shown throughout this document. Mothers that are patients on this floor are called “low-risk postpartum mothers” whose babies have been delivered by “cesarean birth or vaginal birth”. As a member of this community, these are some of the medical terms that one is expected to know because they are crucial in identifying patients …show more content…
One main convention for this discourse community is to “assist the staff with providing comfort measures to patients, families, and visitors.” Members of this community must also have a “friendly, positive and professional attitude.” Be able to “work well with patients, staff and visitors” and “display compassion, and caring, in a non-judgmental way.” This community largely focuses its attention in providing effective care for its patients by assisting the nurses who are attending to these patients. There are many other rules that are not written out in this document such as before walking into a patient's room you need to knock and introduce yourself. This community has many rules but the main conventions that member of this discourse community is expected to follow are listed in the