It’s Volunteers’ Week and here at North Bristol NHS Trust we are celebrating all our wonderful volunteers who support patients, staff, and visitors throughout our organisation.
We have more than 470 volunteers across our sites, which has risen by more than 100 since last year. Our amazing volunteers at NBT donated more than 39,000 hours of their time across 35 different roles last year.
This included the successful return of two different volunteer roles in our Women and Children’s Health Division. Our Maternity Ward Support Volunteers enhance the quality and comfort of women and birthing people during their stay by offering complementary support to improve their experience, under direct supervision from the qualified ward staff. Bliss volunteers help premature or sick babies by supporting both families and professionals and enabling life-changing research.
We have also developed two new volunteer roles, the Patient Feedback role, and Appointment Buddy role. These roles were developed in response to patient feedback and in collaboration with our volunteers.
Our League of Friends volunteers at both Southmead and Cossham have continued to support our services, running popular coffee shops in our hospitals, with profits being reinvested to support patients, staff and visitors.
We are very grateful for the important contribution volunteers provide. They have a huge impact on the patient experience and are highly valued by our staff from across the trust and we want to celebrate them all this week.
In May this year, we held our Volunteer Celebration Event 2024. The event was an opportunity to celebrate our wonderful volunteers and saw us award over 42 certificates and badges to those who have reached five, 10, 15, 20 - and an incredible 25 years - of volunteering at NBT.
We had a fantastic celebration with afternoon tea and secret singing waiters providing entertainment. We hope the event made everyone feel valued as both patients and staff are very grateful for all your time and energy.
We also celebrated 10 years of the Move Makers, who were only originally asked to volunteer for three weeks when the Brunel building first opened!
We want to welcome and encourage people of all ages and all backgrounds to volunteer with us. There really is a role for everyone. From our patient befrienders, ward support volunteers, mealtime companions, or patient and carer partners.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer at NBT please take a look at our website or contact the team.