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Canberra Today 15°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Volunteers get intensive

Canberra hospital volunteers Carmen Hayhoe, left, and Helen Read. Photo by Silas Brown
CANBERRA Hospital’s intensive care unit will soon have a program that will see a volunteer assisting the families of patients during treatment.

The program is one of three new volunteer programs to be introduced into the hospital; requiring more than 60 new volunteers.

Volunteer manager Amanda Mironow said the ICU volunteer program is about having a volunteer to “meet and greet” families when they are in the ICU’s waiting room.

She said often the families arrive at ICU before the patients.

“One of the nurses in the intensive care unit has worked on putting a program together developing a [volunteer] role in the intensive care unit,” Amanda told “CityNews”.

“That volunteer will be the link between the family in the waiting room and the medical staff in the unit.”

Another new program is the Ward 11A meal assistance program that calls for volunteers to assist elderly patients with their meals.

“It’s not feeding patients, volunteers cannot feed,” she said. “But it will be simple things; like a traffic-light system – if I am in hospital and I am a green traffic light it will mean that I’ll need to be back in my bed, and my tray table is ready and when the food tray is there, I’m ready to go.”

She said it could also be opening food packages, cutting up food or simply waking sleeping patients to remind them to eat their meal as well as giving them social contact, too.

“It’s ensuring that people are getting their nutrition and assisting them with that,” she said.

In late July, a “Way Finding” program will be introduced to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital to help staff, patients and visitors find their way through the new hospital.

“As you know, there’s a lot of building on campus, there’s a lot of offices that have moved and even staff may not know where they might be,” she said.

Already the hospital has 400 volunteers over 17 existing programs; including the successful emergency department program.

Ms Mironow said she isn’t looking for “a particular set of skills” in her volunteers, but people wanting to give back to the community.

More information at www.health.act.gov.au/volunteering or 6174 5272.

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