Students Offering Optimism To Help (SOOTHE)

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About Us

SOOTHE (Students Offering Optimism To Help) is a program where Hopkins students provide comfort, distraction, and support for patients in physical or emotional distress through engaging conversation or guided activities.

SOOTHE serves to foster connection between empathetic and enthusiastic students with patients to alleviate their suffering. The Johns Hopkins Hospital is an asylum for those seeking respite from their pain. These experiences can be healing, but simultaneously isolating. Through this organization, the plethora of students seeking to increase their comfort with distressed patients can gain these skills while supporting these patients with companionship and solace.

Mission Statement

Purpose: To engage patients and distract them from their pain so they may feel short-term relief and long-term improvement in their pain perception and/or condition.

Vision: A multi-disciplinary volunteer organization that provides patients with relief, companionship, and joy while enabling physicians-in-training to improve competency and comfort in interacting with patients in distress.

Values: As student doctors, we do not aim to cure, treat, or manage these patients. Patients should whole-heartedly choose to participate in this initiative, with thorough knowledge of the benefits and risks. Students will attend shifts as volunteers, learners, and with a warm presence fueled by the purpose of providing solace.

Quotes from our student volunteers

"She [patient] was very delighted to have some company for a short period of time!"

"I recently had the sweetest experience with a patient in the head and neck unit. He expressed his heartfelt appreciation for our student volunteers, asking when we'd be back and eagerly anticipating our future visits! Definitely a treasured experience and I hope you all get to volunteer soon!"

"I just had a fantastic conversation with a patient and she explained that this will be her first Thanksgiving away from her husband and kids and that she is grateful to have a medical team at Hopkins and volunteers like us who can help fill the large void while she is away from her family."