Working with our Volunteers

Volunteers at NUH

Volunteers are vital and valued members of Team NUH. There is a wide-range of opportunities to volunteer across different wards, services and departments in our hospitals.

Research Volunteers

Research Volunteers are one of the many different roles that are available to people who want to come and volunteer at our hospitals.

Volunteers work best where they are embedded with front-line teams and can become an extended part of the workforce. Typically volunteers work 3-4 hour shifts on days and times that they are available. They are flexible and can work an ongoing or ad hoc basis.

All people who undertake volunteering roles within NUH - including within clinical research - need to be registered and approved volunteers. Volunteers are recruited, inducted and trained in a similar way to every member of Team NUH, with additional training and support from R&I for Research Volunteers.

Organising Volunteers

The Research & Innovation department will plan and supoport the deployment of volunteers to where they are needed. We will also begin to recruit new volunteers to support particular trials or projects, so that they become an integral part of the team as early as possible in the trial lifecycle.

Duties

Some of the duties they provide are similar to all volunteering roles here - meet and greet; wayfinding; providing encouragement, support and assistance to patients or visitors.

They also do more research-specific duties some of which are:

• Talking to participants about taking part in the Participant in Research Experience Survey (PRES)
• Accompanying patients between different research and non-research facilities/locations during their appointments
• Making drinks and serving refreshments
• Making sure participants have all the necessary paperwork, information and records with them on arrival; photocoping or collating paperwork for the research delivery team
• Light cleaning and preparation tasks, so that the research space is ready and available for the next patient
• Transporting non hazardous samples from clinic to laboratory (subject to all safety assessments being completed satisfactorily)

Virtual Research Volunteers

Since 2020 we have also developed a role of "virtual volunteer' which enables people to support the development of research without the need to do so face-to-face. They complete the NUH Volunteer recruitment and R&I training like all volunteers, but they have opetd to support our work remotely, rather than onsite. The Virtual Volunteers support in the following ways:

• Virtual drop-in advice clinics for researchers developing grant proposals - these are once a month and are ararnged through the R&I Grants Team
• Advisory roles supporting a clinical trial or study
• Advisory role on committees or boards that are part of the research governance or decision-making processes