First class lounges for first class NHS carers
NHS staff enjoy their favourite paper in the perfect setting for a relaxing read – airport-style first class lounges.
Aviation workers – many of whom have been furloughed – have been using spare hospital rooms to serve refreshments and offer a friendly chat to the heroes battling Covid.
Meanwhile, ride-sharing app Uber – which has offered health staff free trips – has been encouraging Metro readers to send in messages of thanks to the NHS using the hashtag GratefulUK.
Some of them were printed in yesterday’s edition and – to make sure staff saw them – copies were sent to the lounges at hospitals across London.
As staff carry on working to save lives, the volunteers behind the Project Wingman lounges initiative have set a new goal.
They are appealing for help to convert a double decker bus into a mobile lounge that can be parked outside hospitals.
The Project Wingman Wheels Appeal is aimed at raising £100,000 in donations for the vehicle, which will travel the country giving healthcare workers space to ‘unwind and decompress’. It will expand the scheme which has been supporting up to 650 healthcare workers daily, from as far north as Elgin in Moray to Hove in East Sussex on the south coast.
Co-founder Professor Rob Bor said the scheme was ‘a unique and practical demonstration of how front-line healthcare workers can be supported at a time of considerable professional and personal stress’.
He added: ‘The relevance of aircrew’s unique skill set is to provide listening and well-being support.’
The project’s CEO, Captain Emma Henderson, said: ‘Project Wingman continues to remain entirely self-sufficient, launching static lounges across hospitals in the UK with the support of our incredible volunteers.
‘This Wheels Appeal will generate the funds to enable us to operate our very own mobile service, reaching many more NHS staff with our tea and empathy service.’
The appeal – seecrowdfunder.co.uk/ wingmanwheels – runs until Tuesday and organisers hope to launch a national tour of the mobile service early next year. The aim is for the bus to stay at more than 45 hospitals for six days each in 2021.