Texas A&M student saves a patient’s life at St. Joseph Health College Station Hospital

A Texas A&M student performed CPR on a patient at St. Joseph’s Health College Station Hospital and saved their life.

Richard Monks is a student at Texas A&M and a Certified CPR volunteer at St. Joseph Hospital, where he spends his Friday afternoons.

KBTX spoke with Monks about how he became a hero that day.

“A code blue alarm went off, which in the ER, it’s on the speakers, it’s a loud voice that says code blue. You know when it happens because everyone jumps up in the ER and goes wherever the code blue is happening,” said Monks. “I stepped up, I got in on the rotation, it came to me, it was my turn to do CPR, and I was giving compressions. Their pulse eventually came back and they started breathing and I could stop doing CPR.”

Monks says getting experience like this makes him want to make a difference one day.

“It was quite an adrenaline rush, and afterward, you really do feel good about yourself and you think ‘A person gets to walk around another day on this planet because of something that I helped with,’” said Monks.

The volunteer position solidified his dream of becoming a surgeon.

“I thought it would be good for me to go work in a hospital, get experience, see what the doctors do on a day-to-day basis,” said Monks.

The Volunteer Services Manager at St. Joseph, William Shaw, says the volunteer program is open for anyone to apply.

“A volunteer can serve at any of the five St. Joseph Hospitals and clinics and can serve in several departments like the ER, CCU, and telemetry as well as various administrative roles and other opportunities. Volunteers can help with driving the golf cart, they can read short stories with patients. We have Musical Volunteers and Spiritual Care Volunteers, there is just about any kind of work volunteers can do within our hospital.”

Shaw says they currently have 600 active volunteers, the majority of those are students.

”We have opportunities for volunteers to come here, and to serve patients, visitors, even employees, they assist our team members in many different ways,” said Shaw.

A program that allows for hands-on service with patients, even students who want to advance in health-related careers.

“Countless stories of volunteers getting to interact with patients, getting to hear patient’s stories, getting to help patients and those stories of course change the volunteers,” said Shaw. “Every semester or every year, I have students who will email me or text message me and say ‘Hey I got accepted into medical school, thank you for the opportunity to be able to be a volunteer with St. Joseph Health.”