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Annual Members’ Meeting—Thursday 15 September

06 September 2011

A new initiative funded by the Friends of Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and run by hospital volunteers to improve the experience of patients will be the topic of a presentation at the Trust's Annual Members' Meeting.

A new initiative funded by the Friends of Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and run by hospital volunteers to improve the experience of patients will be the topic of a presentation at the Trust's Annual Members' Meeting.

The meeting will be held at 5:30pm on Thursday 15 September in the Restaurant on the Lower Ground Floor of the hospital—everyone is welcome.

The Annual Members' Meeting will include presentations by Public Governor Melvyn Jeremiah, Professor Sir Christopher Edwards (Chairman), Heather Lawrence (Chief Executive) and Lorraine Bewes (Director of Finance)—there will also be an opportunity to quiz the Board of Directors during a Question and Answer session and refreshments will be served afterwards.

The Friends Patient Support Project is an exciting new project, launched earlier this year, run by Serena Venticonti (Patient Support Co-ordinator) with a wonderful team of more than 30 volunteers who help patients in a variety of ways:

  • Visiting patients: Volunteers spend time chatting to patients, reading to them and running errands such as going to the Hospital Shop on their behalf.
  • Mealtime assistance: It is very important for patients, particularly elderly patients, to eat well in hospital and so our volunteers are trained by our clinical staff to be able to safely help at mealtimes, sometimes by just providing some company and encouragement and on other occasions by giving physical assistance.
  • 'Here to help': From talking to members of the public we found that visitors sometimes struggle to find their way around the hospital. At peak periods, our volunteers spend time in the hospital directing patients and visitors to different departments and, if necessary, accompanying them to where they need to go.
  • 'Request a volunteer': We have recently launched a new part to this project called 'Request a volunteer'. Often it is not possible for friends and family members to visit someone in hospital as much as they would like. We wanted to set up a system whereby these patients could be visited by volunteers on behalf of their loved ones.

Request a volunteer now!

Contributors
George Vasilopoulos