Health and social care is one of the largest volunteering sectors in the UK. This includes organisations like the NHS and charities which improve the wellbeing of people of all ages. So what do helpers actually get involved with? The opportunities are more diverse than we imagined as our bloggers reveal.

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Thursday Aug 21, 2008

T-shirts now on sale!

T-shirts of the same design that Sir Terry will be wearing are now on sale in our online shop!  Have a look a them HERE and maybe buy one?

Posted by Dawn ( 11:50 AM )
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Wednesday Aug 20, 2008

Changes...

We had our twice-yearly general meeting on Monday and some welcome changes were made!  There is generally a split in opinion at NHR which is to do with how much work we are expected to put in.  One opinion is that we're volunteers and that we should be able to put in as much or as little effort as we like.  Others of us know that if everyone had this attitude, nothing would get done! 

Personally, I feel that there should be a minimum requirement and that everyone should be expected to do regular ward visits.  Some people go every week but others haven't been for months!   I think we've managed to reach a compromise now.... it is now a minimum requirement for everyone at the station to do one ward visit per month which I think is pretty fair, and 12 visits a year isn't really that many! I've been asked to draw up the schedule so fingers crossed that this new idea will actually get people on the wards!

Posted by Dawn ( 3:00 PM )
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Friday Aug 15, 2008

Wogan said yes!

Just received this email from Terry Wogan's "people"!!:

Hello Dawn,

We received your email regarding your "I wish I was a hospital radio DJ" T-Shirt.

I'm sure we could sort out a photo of Sir Terry wearing this for you - if you'd like to send it to the address below (with a note reminding me of what it's for and what you need) I will try to sort it out for you.

Many thanks,

Joe

 

Posted by Dawn ( 1:45 PM )
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Wednesday Aug 13, 2008

Pestering Celebrities

We (me and my boyfriend) are currently in the process of designing and building a new website for the station.  I think hospital radio can sometimes be seen as a bit dull so we're trying to fill the website with fun stuff to convince people it's not! 

So...I've just emailed loads of famous radio DJ's to ask if they will wear one of our t-shirts (which says "I wish I was a hospital radio DJ" on it) for a picture for the website.  Fingers crossed that at least one of them will get back to me.

Posted by Dawn ( 3:30 PM )
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Monday Aug 11, 2008

You're listening to Nottingham Hospitals' Radio...

.....I'm Dawn and I'm here with you till 8 o'clock tonight.

This is the first thing you would hear if you were to tune in to my show at 6pm every Thursday.  Not very original but I've not been doing it for that long!

I've been doing a show once a week since March 2008.  I do the 6pm – 8pm slot every Thursday and I love doing it.  The great thing about hospital radio (at least at our station) is that, within reason, you can generally talk about whatever you like.  I do sometimes struggle to think of things to say but I do have some regular features.  We try to be accessible to everyone so my features are pretty general:  On This Day (where I talk about some of the things that happened on that particular day in years gone by); News to Amuse (catchy eh?  A look at some of the more light-hearted news stories from around the world) and What's On (for patients who are going to be out and about at the weekend, and a chance to promote some of our donators).  

Patients have access to a number of local and national radio stations but the good thing about hospital radio, from a patient's point of view, is that they can request a song and hear it played moments later.  I also give away prizes and obviously listeners have a much better chance of winning something on my show than they would on any other radio station, and they get it hand-delivered to them after the show!  I regularly write to companies to request prizes and we have had some generous donations from restaurants such as Wagamama, La Tasca and Las Iguanas amongst others and it's great to be able to give these away to someone who might be feeling a bit down about spending time in hospital and hopefully it gives them something to look forward to when they get out.  

We'll have photos of some of our winners up on the new website soon, so keep an eye out!

Dawn

Posted by Dawn ( 4:17 PM )
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Welcome to my blog

Hi there.  My name is Dawn and I volunteer at a hospital radio station for a few hours each week.  I’ve been presenting my two-hour show since March… but there’s so much more to do!

First of all, let me just tell you why I decided to join the station.  I graduated with a media studies degree in 2005 and moved back to my hometown of Nottingham.   There isn’t an abundance of work in Nottingham for someone with this kind of degree and no work experience so I decided I’d better do something about it.  A lot of jobs I had considered applying for in the past had asked for voluntary experience and as radio broadcasting was something I did as part of my degree, and enjoyed, I contacted the station, had an interview and started volunteering in October 2007. 

As part of my induction I was encouraged to organise my own fundraising event, which I did - the Christmas Raffle.  It was a lot of work and I must have contacted at least a hundred different companies before I received any responses!  All the emails and letters did finally pay off and I got some great prizes from restaurants, shops and other organisations.  We managed to sell loads of raffle tickets and the station made more money than it had in any of the previous years’ raffles!

As well as fundraising, all the members of the station go on regular ward visits.  This is so we can get song requests from the patients but also so they actually know about the station and that they can listen for free.  Some members are often reluctant to go out on the wards as the response towards us isn’t always positive.  Generally though we manage to get quite a few requests, and for the patient who doesn’t get many visitors, being able to request their favourite song and hear it on the radio on the same night might be the highlight of their day! 

Anyway, I think that’s enough for now…I’ll tell you more about what I do, including my show in the next post.

See you soon,

Dawn

Posted by Dawn ( 4:14 PM )
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