Every one a hero
When ROBERT HARDMAN joined one hospital helpforce, he was humbled and moved by the difference they make to the lives of others – and their own. So what are you waiting for?
PAM Hearne is looking pretty cheerful, all things considered. The previous day, her car collided with a van on the way home from the chemist and the 85year-old was flung against her steering wheel when her airbag failed to activate.
Now, on her second day in the observation ward of the emergency department at Surrey’s Frimley Park Hospital, she is in a considerable amount of pain. But she is in good spirits, not least because of the chap with the friendly face who shows up every now and then to see if she needs anything.
Roger Groocock moves on down the ward to see Mary Charlton, 89, who is also smiling. She has been admitted after a fall at her home and the doctors are worried about the fracture to her wrist. But she feels well looked-after – both by the medical staff but also by this cheerful soul bringing her a cup of tea. ‘I’m here on my own and it’s so lovely to have someone to talk to,’ says Mary as Roger appears.
The nurses are all delighted to see him, too. ‘He’s gorgeous!’ Sister Jean Parsons whispers behind Roger’s back with a big grin as she gets on with her duties.
Roger has no medical qualifications whatsoever. He is a 75-year- old retired bank manager who used to run the Basingstoke branch of NatWest and simply wants to ‘do his bit’. Yet he is making a material difference to the overall atmosphere of one of the most stressful places some of us will ever see – the A&E department of a major hospital.
And he regards the few hours he spends each week as a hospital volunteer here at Frimley Park as among the most rewarding and life-enhancing aspects of his life. ‘ Most of the people in here didn’t expect to be here when they woke up this morning and I love talking to them,’ he explains.
Rosie Perry, 44, says the same. She decided to volunteer following the sudden death of her teenage son Charlie from a very rare genetic disorder a year ago.
‘He always wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to honour him in some way,’ she said. At first, she had no idea how she would cope with returning to volunteer on the same unit that Charlie had been admitted to.
Now she is a devoted part of the team with whom she works for a few hours each week, whether it is making tea or making beds or making friends. Right now, she is checking on Alfie Williams, 13, who has just broken his arm playing football. ‘I’ve been surprised by just how much I love it here,’ she explains.
Volunteers such as Rosie and Roger are not only making life that little bit more comfortable for some of the patients but they are also freeing up valuable time for the medical professionals to get on with their jobs. In other words, this is a win, win, win situation. It is one that could apply to any of us, regardless of our age, our profession or our background.
That is why, today, the Daily Mail is proud to launch the most ambitious call for volunteers since the 2012 Olympics, if not the Second World War.
With support stretching right across the public health spectrum – from the unions to the highest echelons of the NHS to the hardpressed doctors and matrons on every ward in the land – we make this very special Christmas appeal to our famously generous readers: this year, why not think about offering that most precious of gifts – your time?
Being in hospital can be a bewildering and miserable experience for many patients. Being a frontline medical professional can be intensely trying. Yet many of us can, in a small way, make things easier for both sides – and enrich our own lives at the same time.
For some of those I meet along the way, volunteering really has had a transformative effect on their entire outlook on life. For some younger helpers, it is a first step on the road to a possible career in medicine. For most of those involved, it is simply very satisfying to be of use.
And, crucially, there is now a major movement under way to establish a clear and co-ordinated nationwide pathway to finding the right hospital volunteering opportunity for everyone.
There is, course, nothing new about public- spirited individuals helping out in hospitals. People have been doing that for centuries.
UP until now, though, it has tended to be a somewhat random process. Some hospitals have had brilliant volunteers organised through much-loved institutions such as the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS) and British Red Cross, which have been channelling goodwill to good causes for years. Some hospitals, however, have had no volunteers at all. With little to link all these disparate groups, the overall effect has often been hit-and-miss.
Now, however, a new social movement called Helpforce is changing all that. With a small, strategic core team it connects hospitals, volunteers and voluntary groups with dramatic results.
Best practice is now pooled instantly and training is shared. Volunteer numbers are shooting up. At the same time, doctors, nurses and their managers are discovering that civilian support is not merely good for local public relations. A well-run team of volunteers can help deliver substantial benefits for patients.
Just this month, Helpforce organised the first national awards for health volunteers, with winners scattered all over the country. The winner of the Outstanding Volunteering Team of the Year prize was Frimley Park so I have decided to make that my first port of call.
The hospital is vast, the flagship of a local NHS trust with three hospitals and 9,000 staff – more than twice the entire workforce of, say, Harrods. The queue for the car park stretches around the block. Yet, inside, there is a palpable sense of calm.
We are routinely warned that the NHS is in crisis but this place, though buzzing, seems well under control. It certainly helps that staff are now supported by a team of more than 500 volunteers, most of them giving a morning or afternoon each week. Whether you calculate all that goodwill in terms of cups of tea or freed-up nursing staff, it is a substantial contribution. The volunteers all come under the thoroughly professional auspices of a manager whose job is to get the best out of them all.
Mike Stone, voluntary services manager, has a simple target: to recruit one volunteer for every bed in the hospital – and there are 1,200 of those. ‘It’s very simple. It’s about improving the patient experience,’ he says. ‘Everything else follows on from that. It means that there is someone there who can finish that game of Scrabble when a
nurse cannot.’ Most people in hospital, he points out, are elderly. A ward can be a lonely place for a lot of them and if you can help to lift the mood of the patients, it will rub off on everyone else. Mike has developed a broad range of volunteering options, well aware that certain challenges appeal to very different people.
Some people might be mustard keen to do their bit but might feel uncomfortable about, say, spoonfeeding a person with dementia. On the other hand, they might be very happy running errands to and from the pharmacy or guiding bewildered members of the public around the labyrinthine layout of a big hospital like Frimley Park or simply conducting patient surveys by the door.
In the course of the day, I meet Janet Jones and Elaine Mayhew, both pensioners, both widows and both keen to help the hospital that tended their late husbands so well. Neither wants to work on a ward, however. ‘I’m still in bereavement and I’m not sure how I’d cope with that,’ says Janet. Instead, like Elaine, she prefers to help out as a ‘wayfinder’ or guide.
Tony Edwards, 75, on the other hand, loves being on a ward at the hospital that saved his life after he was laid low with peritonitis. He has also been treated for cancer here.
He devotes himself to the stroke recovery or ‘ step down’ unit. Whereas the volunteers in A&E might see different patients every day, Tony often sees the same patients from one week to the next. He helped one man with his recovery for six months.
‘I just talked to him, encouraged him with his tongue exercises, that sort of thing,’ says the former sales director. ‘And I was here to wave him off when he went home. For as long my health allows, I want to keep on doing this.’
EVERY volunteer is checked on the usual security databases and given very clear training. No one is permitted to perform any function that requires medical expertise. Even basic but specific tasks such as feeding a patient require a formal training process first. And new programmes are being developed all the time as Helpforce circulates procedures developed at different hospitals.
Sir Tom Hughes-Hallett, the philanthropist and former head of Marie Curie who founded Helpforce two years ago, points to a scheme in Norfolk where a hospital has created a network of ‘settling in’ volunteers to assist patients returning to their homes.
‘ Ultimately, hospitals are all about creating more free beds to treat patients as soon as possible but staff are reluctant to send people home if they live alone and haven’t got help,’ he says.
The ‘settling in service’ draws on volunteers – many of them retired nurses or social workers – who wait at a patient’s home to receive them back from hospital, help them get the heating on, fill up the fridge, and generally keep an eye on them.
It is hardly rocket science and a number of hospitals already have similar programmes. What is needed now is to extend this network of helpers and create more empty beds in hospital. This is where the Daily Mail’s Helpforce campaign can help.
For many volunteers, it is not merely about being useful. It is about putting something back after a deeply traumatic personal experience. That is what motivates rosie Perry at Frimley. It is also what drives Sue Embleton, 68, at york Hospital.
‘Two years ago, I lost my daughter, Amanda, to cervical cancer. The staff here were fantastic and I thought: “What can I do to say thank you?”,’ she says.
Every week, she helps out in the outpatients’ department, whether it’s taking people to their blood tests or doing the photocopying. ‘It’s changed my life because it’s a reason for getting up in the morning,’ says Sue. ‘It makes you feel appreciated.’
As in Surrey, so in yorkshire, the stories are the same, as is the enthusiasm. retired financial adviser Martin Tunney, 58, says he just wanted to ‘ put something back’. Now a few hours in york’s A&E is one of the highlights of his week. ‘I have the nice-to-do jobs like talking to people, not the medical must-do jobs, which we leave to the doctors and nurses,’ he says.
Gina Newton, 73, is one of york’s ‘dining companions’ on the stroke rehabilitation ward, helping those unable to feed themselves. ‘Seeing an empty plate, especially if it’s someone who hasn’t had many visitors, gives me so much pleasure,’ she says.
Although many of those who volunteer are retired, a lot are only just embarking on their careers. Back in Frimley, I drop in on one of Mike Stone’s volunteer introduction sessions and two dozen people have turned up, half of whom must be in their twenties and thirties. Natasha White, 22, a recruitment consultant from Farnborough, tells me that she has already decided she’d like to work with the elderly.
ONE who is already a valued volunteer is Max Whitfield, 18. A doctor’s son, he is determined to be a doctor himself one day and views this as a logical first step.
‘I think I have an affinity with people and I hope I’m having a positive impact,’ says Max.
He does whatever is needed on the respiratory ward for a few hours each week. ‘It might be a chat or it might be helping with the crossword,’ he says. ‘I dare say it’s not for everyone but I just love it.’
That is the recurring sentiment that I hear from every single volunteer. As Sue Embleton reflects: ‘It’s actually given me a bit of my life back.’
This Christmas, look ahead to 2019 and imagine how, for just a few hours each week, you really could be making a difference not just to a lot of other people but also to yourself. Now, wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift?