Hospital Volunteers Happy to Help

28/06/2011 | Hospital Volunteers

MidCentral District Health Board’s Hospital Volunteer Group held their 34th annual group meeting on Monday 27 June 2011, just after Volunteer Awareness Week.

Volunteers Coordinator, Mary Green, thanked her team for the work they do, and thanked MDHB and Human Resources for the ongoing support and encouragement the volunteers receive.

She said: “We are very well supported in our roles, with both hospital staff and patients being very appreciative of what we do. It feels good to be here and it’s a very rewarding job.”

At the meeting it was reported that the volunteers had paid car parking sorted, and they were enjoying their new ‘Rolls-Royce’ of a magazine trolley every week.

Currently the Hospital Volunteer Group has 45 members who perform a wide range of tasks around the hospital. Every weekday the volunteers take a food trolley to all the patients, a flower trolley visits the wards and freshens up patient’s flowers weekly, and another group makes sure books and magazines in waiting rooms are changed over and kept up-to-date.

The group meets once a year to report on how different aspects of their volunteer work are progressing and to make suggestions about how to improve and expand on the work that they do. The group also meets for a Christmas lunch in December, put on by MDHB and Spotless Services to acknowledge and thank them for the exceptional work that they do.

Patient Safety and Clinical Effectiveness Director, Muriel Hanratty, thanked them for the valuable work they do and spoke to the group about the latest projects happening around the hospital including hand hygiene, smoking cessation, and the new joint care clinic.