• Volunteering in a hospital pharmacy
• Volunteers improving the patient experience
• Ensuring a smoother patient pathway through primary and secondary services
East Lancashire Hospital Trust provides a wide range of health services and comprises of six hospitals: 3 acute, 2 small community hospitals and a rehabilitation hospital for out-patients.
Volunteering in the East Lancashire area has been a strong tradition, with the majority of hospital volunteers being recruited through word-of-mouth, via family, friends and colleagues who have had a favourable volunteering experience. Only one Voluntary Services Manager (VSM) covers the 6 hospitals and is based in Burnley General Hospital which is an acute hospital with approximately 1400 beds. The hospitals link closely with the local Council for Voluntary Service (CSV) and other volunteering agencies, and generally the Voluntary Services Manager only has to recruit volunteers via the press if a new service is required or a hospital wants to improve a service. His preferred method is to write an editorial rather than just an advert for volunteers as he feels that this allows potential volunteers to make a more considered decision about opting to volunteer.
Although one of the roles of the VSM is to make wards aware of potential additional help for them, usually staff from hospital departments approach the VSM about openings for volunteers. Together the ward staff and the VSM draw up a job description for the volunteer role and the VSM ensures the volunteer is screened.
There have been volunteers working in the pharmacy in Burnley General Hospital for 12 years. When a new volunteers starts, he or she is brought to the pharmacy and introduced to the staff. The amount of training required depends upon the individual, but generally new volunteers are trained by more experienced ones.
There are 70, mainly part-time staff currently working in the pharmacy, including approximately 5 volunteers. At the moment all the volunteers are male and are aged from approximately 30-50 years old. They share faxing duties, collection and delivery of drug and blood samples and other delivery tasks.
The volunteers are a vital part of ensuring that patients receive a smooth patient ‘pathway’, whether this is within the hospital, from hospital to home, or from home to their General Practitioner. One of the ways volunteers do this is through helping with what the hospital calls ‘the green bag service’. Prior to the service, patients were often seen by consultants who agreed they could be discharged once they received their medicine from the pharmacy. Patients often missed the allocated ‘medicine runs’ by porters if they had been seen by the consultant after the medicines had been delivered to their ward, and consequently they would have to wait for the next drug delivery, which could be up to several hours later. As volunteers have no time restrictions, they can deliver medicines to wards at any time, thus enabling the patient to go home, rather than block beds or waiting rooms.
Help and support is available at all times and volunteers are never expected to carry extremely hazardous medicines or controlled drugs. If medication is of this nature, clinical staff from the ward would be expected to collect this from the pharmacy. Drugs which volunteers do deliver are sealed in heavy duty transport bags and no volunteer is permitted to give out advice over the counter or respond to queries from GPs regarding medication.
Documents listing patient medicines can often take weeks for hospital wards to prepare as secretaries often have to wait for patient notes. The pharmacy creates forms which summarise medication for those who are being discharged, while they are still in hospital, and volunteers also prevent delays and save time by faxing these documents directly to general practitioners in time for the patient discharge. Pharmacy staff visit wards and note changes in patient medication which again decreases patient discharge time. It is the responsibility of the volunteers to check which GP to send the form to and to fax this to the GP practice. By coming in three mornings a week, volunteers can send patient information to 30 GP practices in the Burnley area.
As well as medicines, volunteers also help phlebotomists by delivering blood samples to labs from the anticoagulant clinic and by taking books to the clinic.
In a busy acute hospital such as Burnley General, staff are extremely appreciative of the volunteers who can save time in the delivery of medicine and blood, and while many patients may not even be aware, volunteers improve the hospital service which in turn means an earlier discharge for them, and quicker admissions for new patients.
For further information, please contact:
Philip Shaw
Deputy Director at Burnley General Hospital
Casterton Avenue
Burnley BB10 2PQ
Tel: 01282 474303
David Parkinson
Voluntary Services Manager
East Lancashire NHS Trust
Corporate Offices
Casterton Avenue
Burnley
BB10 2PQ
Tel: 01282 474485
Email: David.parkinson@cd.burnleyhc-tr.nwest.nhs.uk
