Helping the Hospitals

By Jimmy Burch

I have a part-job over at Ventures Business Services in Madison, CT. There are several sectors in the building, but I am part of Medical Material Handling (MMH). I work there three hours a day; twice a week for minimum wage where I assort trays.

But I’m not just making sure that my trays are built in the correct order, I am also helping lives. Connecticut hospitals rely on us to provide the tools they need to help out with their patients. We are basically like a storage unit for them. For each tray build, a person’s life is helped out. I usually finish up eight to ten trays per work day. I am to place each and every item in its own section in the tray. I also check the expiration dates to see if they can be used. We have a big board up for everyone to see that displays the date which items cannot have their expiration date on or before. If it is, we don’t use it. We at MMH ensure the best of medical products are placed in properly.

When we finish a tray, it gets taken out and shipped over to a hospital in Connecticut. “We provide medical trays for the entire Yale New Haven Health network,” said Jeff Spooner, a crew leader at MMH. He supervises the workers and helps them with their tasks. “Each tray is for a different purpose and for different departments within the hospital.”

I am very fast-paced at my work. I went to Ventures about a year ago for a two-day work assessment. I was given some of the less complicated and easier trays to start off with. I sorted things very quickly, and the staff were very impressed by how efficient I was. It was not long before I was assigned to some harder trays, which I also nailed. They were so in awe that they quickly offered me a paid position in the MMH unit. I began my paid position on Monday mornings. Shortly after, a co-worker of mine went on medical leave, and I filled in for his Friday afternoon shifts, which I still do to this day. Just recently, I had to have my Monday morning shifts moved to Tuesday mornings so I could work around my new college semester schedule.

I usually get assigned to the NICU 1 trays, some of the more complicated trays, with their products being meant to help out newborns to ensure they are healthy. Basically, for each tray I make, that’s another newborn I’ve saved. The way I see it, I’m doing a very good deed and it should increase my chances of going to heaven after I die.

Jeff says the hospitals benefit very well from all the lifesaving medical trays we’ve shipped out. “We are the only company that provides them, so they rely on us on a daily basis, Monday to Friday, to assist them with all their medical supplies.”

Ventures Business Services is located at 111 Bradley Road in Madison, Conn. And they do more than just assort medical trays. They also have other units, one of them is assigned to pack diapers. We at Ventures are all good Samaritans.