We have been on a huge adventure recently. Our recruitment drive took us to do a presentation at Wigan and Leigh College at the Image Centre in Leigh, where we had been invited by their Tutor, Miranda McFarlane. We met a lovely group of students who were studying Complementary Therapies or Reflexology. The thirst for therapies is still ever-growing, and it is lovely to see so many keen therapists eager to spread the word.
We had two more therapists join our team in the Salford Dialysis Unit; this brings our team there to seven who do different shifts on different days of the week, depending on their commitments. Our team is ever expanding now with our first one in Oldham. This project is bringing huge benefits to patients to help improve their experience of dialysis and make them more comfortable, enhancing their quality of life.
A few hiccups were had over our uniforms, but we have them to order now, and you can find us in the purple and lilac tunics.
We like to provide in-house training when we can and so we put on a training event at the beginning of March for all our volunteer therapists. We meet a lot of patients who have multiple conditions to deal with, along with renal failure. Diabetes is a common condition amongst our patients, so we invited our lovely Renal dietician, Victoria Scowcroft, and specialist Nurse Gemma Allan to talk to us about Diabetes, diet and fluid restrictions that a renal patient may have to follow. We had a great morning and all our therapists were awarded a certificate of attendance for their portfolios.
All our volunteers are ‘unpaid’ – but none are unappreciated! We are aiming to provide a programme of in-house training as a way of saying thank you and providing some career development and knowledge to make them more confident in a clinical environment. So we laid on a training workshop in March which was well attended by 14 therapy volunteers.. Diabetes is a common condition amongst our patients, so we invited our lovely renal dietician, Victoria Scowcroft and specialist Nurse Gemma Allan to talk to us about Diabetes, diet and fluid restrictions a renal patient may have to follow. We had a great morning, and all our therapists were awarded a certificate of attendance (see picture) for their portfolios.
Another two therapists have been interviewed at Wigan Dialysis Unit and their details have now been sent off for processing to our Volunteer Services team. They have to have their DBS checks, provide two references, and complete all their online training before attending the mandatory induction at Salford, then back to me for their local induction. The volunteer process can take some time, depending on how quickly all checks are completed. The volunteer therapists must be really keen in order to achieve all this. It is definitely worth it in the end to be able to make such a fantastic difference to dialysis patients! We are so proud of them and value them giving up their time to help our patients.
Another exciting venture was the ‘World Kidney Day’, which took place on the 9th of March. Mo & Belinda (our therapists) were absolutely brilliant at helping out and delivering little therapies to the passers-by in the foyer of the Hope building. We also had quite a bit of interest from people wishing to give up their time and help renal patients.
Our second volunteer therapist Tina started at Bolton Dialysis Unit, she shadowed our lovely therapist Christine at Salford first to observe the way in which therapies take place in the clinical setting. Then Tina will commence and do some lovely treatments on the Bolton dialysis patients.
Until next time! See you soon.
DON’T FORGET EVERYONE!
If you have any friends, family members or colleagues who are interested in learning a new skill and training in a short course on Complementary Therapies in order to become a volunteer, then please get in touch – I’d love to hear from you! janet.cairnie@srft.nhs.uk Tel – 0161 20 64828
Volunteer@srft.nhs.uk Tel: – 0161 20 68942
