By Sallie Stone
They’re not your grandmother’s candy stripers – and you can apply to be one.
Long gone is the candy striper uniform — a red and white pinafore with big patch pockets and girlish ruffles that once was familiar to hospital patients everywhere — but the candy striper concept is alive and well. And this summer, it’s coming, or rather coming back, to Beaufort Memorial.
The 2022 Rising Star Youth Volunteer Program, as it is officially known, will offer high school students (now male as well as female) a chance to observe the inner workings of a community hospital and to consider in the process whether a career in health care would be right for them.
At the same time, the student volunteers will be helping to make the hospital experience a little brighter and the hospital workload a little lighter for the patients and employees they meet.
Students admitted to the Rising Star Program—which is geared to those 14 and above—will enroll in a two-week June or July session. Limited to no more than eight participants per session, the students will be expected to volunteer from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday for the two weeks.
Program participants will spend their mornings volunteering in clinical and nonclinical settings. In the afternoons they’ll tour the various hospital departments, learning not only about each department’s work but also about its employees’ positions and the degrees or certifications they require. All hospital departments will be visited.
Candy stripers then and now
The program is the brainchild of Julie Schott, a registered nurse and longtime nursing director at Beaufort Memorial who developed her passion for patient care as a candy striper at the hospital when she was 14. (She still has her volunteer patch and a thank-you letter from the hospital.)
“I volunteered in the summer of 1973,” Schott said. “We ran errands, refilled ice pitchers, delivered flowers and transported patients to radiology. I actually helped with EKGs, and learning how that test determined if a patient was having a heart attack was amazing. I enjoyed helping people.”
Schott, who says she’s wanted to revive the hospital’s youth volunteer program for years (and happens to have a 14-year-old granddaughter she hopes will be a rising star herself this summer), is only one of several current Beaufort Memorial employees who got their start as candy stripers.
Another is Linda Arp, a certified respiratory therapist who retired in 2020 from full-time work at BMH after 25 years but continues on “as needed” because, as she put it, “I love what I do, and I’m not ready to give up my patients.”
She, too, dreamed young of nursing. “As a little girl, I remember seeing a picture of a nurse and deciding that is what I wanted to be. When the candy striper opportunity came along, I signed up along with my friend Julie Schott. I loved doing things for sick people and talking to them — along with wearing the cute red-and-white dress.
“Years later my mother had a rare lung disease, so I spent time in the hospital with her and learned about respiratory therapy. I found out BMH had a program in which I could work and go to school online. I did that for two years and became a respiratory therapist.”
Jackie Szucs, a certified medical-surgical registered nurse, also remembers as formative her candy striper days at Beaufort Memorial. “My favorite memory is of taking a patient to radiology,” she said. “The tech took me into the dark room and showed me how they developed the X-ray. I felt important and professional. This and the fact my mother, sister and grandmother worked in health care were the biggest reasons I became a nurse.”
Juanita Singleton-Murray sums it up well. “My time as a candy striper at BMH allowed me the opportunity to see what nursing was truly all about,” said the clinical educator. “What I saw got me excited and left me wanting more. That experience had a huge impact on my decision to become a nurse. I would do it all over again.”
Admission to the 2022 Rising Star Youth Volunteer Program will require a personal interview, completed application and parental consent forms, health screenings and a signed confidentiality agreement. The application deadline is May 6. Applicants need to be at least 14 years old on or before June 8.
The program is part of PATH, a Beaufort Memorial workforce development initiative made possible through an American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant from Beaufort County and partnerships with Beaufort County School District, University of South Carolina Beaufort and Technical College of the Lowcountry.
For more information on the Rising Stars Program or to apply, visit www.BeaufortMemorial.org/RisingStars or call Leslie Suda at 843-522-5649.
