Our dedicated volunteers offer practical and emotional support to our patients
They also provide a helping hand for our staff and a friendly face for our visitors.
They can support the hospital in several ways from welcoming and directing visitors, giving out refreshments on the wards or chatting to patients.
Our recruitment process can take from one to three months. It will depend on how quickly you complete necessary checks and stages.
And we would like it to be a valuable experience for you too
You’ll make new friends, meet and work with new people from all walks of life, learn new skills and gain new experience.
Our volunteers tell us they feel more confident and happy by giving back and helping others.
If you’d like to learn more before you apply, please phone us
Volunteering across the Barts Health: 020 7377 7792
Newham: 020 7363 8107
St Bartholomew's: 020 3765 8897
The Royal London: 020 7377 7334
Whipps Cross: 020 8535 6772
John Moss has been a volunteer at Whipps Cross for 13 years
He talks about his journey as a volunteer after retiring from the Metropolitan Police.
Volunteers who like driving and would be interested in driving the cherished buggy to help patients, visitors, and staff to get to their destination across the site. For this role, you will require a full clean driving license.
This is the starting point for many of our volunteers. We all know how big and disorientating hospitals can be, particularly if you are anxious about your appointment and don’t know where to go.
As a meet and greet volunteer you will play an important part in ensuring that our patient's journey and experience is the best it can be by helping patients feel comfortable from the moment they step into our hospitals.
The Active Response Volunteer (ARV) role is the most popular role. The ARV is about ensuring that we help the patients and areas across the hospital that most need our help and clinicians either bleep or call volunteers to ask for their help. Some of the things that an ARV might do include
In addition, you can help patients and families at end-of-life care, help resolve visitor and patient issues with lost property or support the emergency department when under pressure. If you like to be busy and enjoy a challenge this role is for you. There are more than five modules of training that you can do to continually develop your training and experience.
We are lucky to have allies and friends who fundraise and support our hospitals and patients with funding and by providing services to our patients, visitors, and staff. One of the vital services they provide is a trolley that takes refreshment items around to our patients.
If you would like to apply, please complete the section available on the application form or contact the team who can support you.
We are committed to shaping and developing our services with the involvement of the local community. This includes ensuring that the patient's voice is used to inform decision-making to improve outcomes for people using the NHS and our hospitals.
We have a plethora of forums and communities across our hospital where you can contribute and share your patient experience and play your part in helping us to make real and lasting change.
If you are keen to help support your local hospital as a patient voice these are your options:
The Patient Research Champion (PRC) programme Barts Health NHS Trust provides a unique opportunity for members of our community to play a part in our healthcare research activity. We believe that patients, their carers and families and members of the public play an essential role in the development, delivery and dissemination of our research. As a volunteer, you will promote health research from a patient’s point of view, support our research staff in the tasks they undertake and help us to give our patients the best experience of taking part in research at Barts Health possible. You could be a patient, service user, carer or layperson who has some spare time, is enthusiastic about health research and is willing to communicate that to other patients and the public as well as healthcare professionals. We ask our PRCs for a minimum commitment of 4 months, but this can be flexible. You may also be asked to perform ad-hoc activities with other research teams, where required. If you are interested in joining our amazing network of volunteers as a PRC, please read on to find out more about some exciting placement opportunities we have to offer.
Placements are available in:
Bingli Medical Application
We are looking for caring and confident PRCs to be part of a new research project in the emergency department at the Royal London Hospital. The project will test a new medical interview application, which is designed to support doctors to make better diagnoses improve results and reduce waiting times for patients. As part of the role, you will:
Welcome patients as they arrive in the emergency department
Help patients access and use the app in the waiting room
Be on hand to answer questions about the app and project
Provide additional support to research staff as and where necessary
To provide full support to patients in using the app, volunteers are needed to be on-site throughout the day, covering morning, afternoon, and evening periods. Volunteers with previous experience in an emergency department are particularly welcome. Additional training will be provided to volunteers new to working in emergency departments.
Adult Critical Care Unit (ACCU)
The Adult Critical Care Unit (ACCU) is a busy unit based at the Royal London Hospital. If you would like to find out about current research in medical science and play a part in advancing knowledge, this placement could be for you. You can expect lots of interaction with patients in person and over the phone and help ensure patients can express their views on research projects. The ACCU is heavily involved in the Patient Research Experience Survey (PRES), and PRCs play a key role in supporting them with their delivery of the survey. You will contact patients who have completed research trials to get feedback from them on their experience of being in a research study. This placement will suit you if you have good communication skills and enjoy helping others. The team can accommodate PRCs on any weekday, although Wednesday and/or Thursday morning would be preferred as these are the busiest patient days.
CRC Royal London Hospital and CRU Whipps Cross
Our Clinical Research Units (CRU) are based at Whipps Cross Hospital or Royal London Hospital. In these placements, you will welcome patients into the unit, sign them in for their study appointment, and help them to feel comfortable. You will also help to distribute and collect patient research experience surveys (PRES) and perform administrative duties. If you are self-motivated, a team player, and have good communication skills, we would love to hear from you. Previous experience of volunteering in a healthcare setting would be a bonus. Wednesday and/or Thursday mornings would be preferred as these are the busiest patient days, but any other weekday would also be feasible.
Stroke Unit
Based at our Stroke Units in both Newham Hospital and Royal London Hospital, this placement is great for dedicated and reliable individuals. You will help the team by carrying out general admin tasks, such as photocopying and creating stroke packs for education and research purposes. As a key part of the role, you will also help our teams in their delivery of the Patient Research Engagement Survey (PRES).
If you are interested in any of these PRC placement opportunities, please contact James in the Research Engagement team at patientsinresearch.bartshealth@nhs.net