About 20 teens from Butler County learned more than how to get a great tan this summer.

Through the Teen Volunteer Program hosted by L.V. Stabler Memorial Hospital, teens in the county had the opportunity to learn what it was like to work in a hospital.

However, L.V. Stabler Memorial Hospital Director of Business Development David Norrell told the volunteers at the program’s closing brunch that they should have learned more than just the daily ins-and-outs of healthcare.

“For our seniors especially, there are questions that we hope you learned to look for when you go looking for a job,” Norrell said.

“There are things that are important, such as the benefits package, and then there is the benefit of doing something that you enjoy.”

Norrell said this was a good learning opportunity for the volunteers to find out if healthcare is a field that appeals to them along with what specific field in the healthcare system might interest them.

“Hopefully if healthcare is something that you’re interested in, you have had an experience while you were here that you know that you want to help people,” Norrell said. “If that is something that you’re interested in doing, then hopefully you came away saying that this is something that I learned.”

Other pieces of knowledge that each volunteer should walk away with, Norrell said, include knowing how to dress for work and presenting oneself in an interview and professional working environment.

“Even though the work may have been tedious, in a market where jobs are important it’s good to have a job,” Norrell said. “To those of you that have participated in this, you can say, ‘I have 70 hours of experience,’ which is a plus and a positive.”

The teen volunteers were not the only individuals who walked away learning something from the program.

Administrators and staff also learned how to make the program better if the hospital decides to continue it next summer.

“We learned that we probably didn’t do some things well either,” Norrell said. “Maybe we weren’t as organized as we needed to be or the manager wasn’t as hands on as we had hoped. We will look at that. We’ll revamp and work hard to maybe make the program a little bit different for next year if we decide to do it again.”