Life as a Hospital Volunteer during Lockdown

What did you do during the London Olympics? How did you make the most of a gap year? What’s the reason for those missing dates in your CV? Some questions are inevitable and at the outset of this pandemic we both felt in need of a positive answer to the question ‘What did you do during the Covid-19 pandemic?’   

I (Catharine) started to look for volunteering opportunities once I had huge gap in my diary from the start of April (planned travel after finishing a contract at the end of March was cancelled for obvious reasons) and I was anxious about how I would cope in a lockdown situation as I live alone. Like thousands of others I applied to be an NHS volunteer (rejected), with both the Trussell Trust and Red Cross (accepted but all local opportunities had been filled) before I noticed a post in my local Mutual Aid WhatsApp group for Imperial Health Charity volunteers (https://www.imperialcharity.org.uk/news/imperial-health-charity-volunteers-have-helped-to-deliver-over-130000-meals-to-nhs-staff-fighting-coronavirus). I applied and after a very professional selection process and online training I was ready for my first shift. In Zoom calls with Beate, we talked about my experience and she too wanted to volunteer in order to have human contact and give something back alongside working from home in her regular professional job.

During April and May we have been involved in two different roles: delivering food and around the hospital and manning the NHS staff shop booking and working shifts to suit ourselves. This is changing now as the hospital pressures change.

The tiny shop is open to any member of the hospital staff, from cleaners to surgeons, ambulance drivers to nutritionists, and they all turn up to queue and then select their 3 free items. On offer are ready meals, snacks, drinks and toiletries, partially dependent on what has been donated to the charity. As we log each shopper and their department, offering a smile and a bit of chatter, it’s easy to appreciate the breadth of services and the huge racial and cultural diversity which make up the hospitals and to discover what is going on. In April many of the medical staff looked exhausted with the indents on their faces due to PPE. I’ve discussed which food could be eaten in a hotel where a nurse was temporarily living. There were snippets of optimism such as the newly (early) qualified doctor who was excited and delighted after her first session injecting trialists for the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine. I find it fascinating to learn about the impact to different teams giving them a different cycle of pressure such as the clinical engineering team who had to find all the ventilation equipment and connect it all were run off their feet before the patient numbers had increased and are now (at the start of June) busy again as equipment at the hospital is re-configured, and the IVF clinic staff who have been bored (and staffed the shop with us) but who are now busy in catch-up mode.

When doing a delivery shift, we take hot lunches, drinks and snacks to the staff around the hospital.   Each day in Hammersmith Hospital we deliver about 700 hot lunches, mainly to ward staff but some to Imaging teams, Security, Porters and a variety of other support teams. Some are from Leon, others from the Gurdwara Sikh temple, a pizza delivery the donations from Chelsea FC and from a co-ordinated group of pubs and restaurant (pheasant casserole was delivered earlier this week).  I now have huge admiration for anyone who wheels a trolley or cage around a building, as I’ve learnt this takes concentration to avoid pot-holes, technique to overcome the little lip on the exit of lifts and strength to take a laden trolley up and down ramps safely.   

Another benefit of volunteering has been working with the charity staff and the other volunteers. Much like in Serpentine it has been great to meet new people with a common goal, which is especially valuable when our social circles are necessarily static.  As a volunteering team we are almost all new to the charity (the existing volunteers are often over 70 or shielding) and whilst not as racially diverse as the NHS staff our numbers include students, a musician, accountants, lawyers, an events photographer, and many more. Many are on furlough or out of work but a significant number like Beate are volunteering alongside their day-to-day role.

The appreciation of the staff to our services has been amazing and a real reminder of the genuine caring qualities of our NHS staff. I’ve never delivered food to a ward without someone saying thank you. Many have taken their time to thank us volunteers for our services and are amazed that we want to be in a hospital at such a time. To both of us this gratitude and sense of personal worth has changed our pandemic experience fundamentally and from having whole days of feeling overwhelmed and down we know only have occasional hours of this.   

from Catharine Sowerby and Beate Vogt, and the Serpie Mental Health Champions