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.

All | Jenni | Carl | Geraint | Sara | Jasmine | Dawn | Sarah

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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