El Camino Hospital Salutes Los Gatos Volunteers

Los Gatos resident Helen Gaetano, a 46-year volunteer veteran of has donated nearly 19,000 hours at the Information desk and more recently, in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), hospital officials announced this week.

As a PACU volunteer, Gaetano ensures that the unit is stocked with pillows and warm blankets, delivers patient charts and answers multiple phone lines—all tasks that she sees as a way to lighten the load of the hospital’s busy nurses, said hospital spokeswoman Hatti Hamlin.

Gaetano is among more than 1,400 El Camino Hospital volunteers who were recognized this week as part National Volunteer Week, Hamlin said.

"... We want our extraordinary volunteers to know just how valuable and appreciated they are,” said El Camino Hospital CEO Tomi Ryba. “While we appreciate the skills and dedication of our extraordinary paid workforce, our volunteers help make it possible to deliver not just superior care, but superior caring.”

El Camino Hospital is an acute-care, 542-bed, not-for-profit and locally governed organization with campuses in Los Gatos and Mountain View.

In addition to a state-of-the-art emergency department, key medical specialty focuses include cancer care, heart and vascular, neuroscience, genomic medicine, orthopedic and spine and the only Women’s Hospital in Northern California, Hamlin wrote in a press release.