NBT Volunteer Photoshoot Exhibition

We have a few groups of knitters who work hard behind the scenes to contribute items for our patients.  

Sharon says “I chose to knit the cannula sleeves as they are easy but fun to knit, you follow guidelines but can vary the patterns and colours and add different “twiddles”, so it doesn’t get boring. My father and my mother-in-law both lived with Dementia, and it feels good to help others with similar experiences.” 

The Rodway Rubies WI knitting and crochet group are also generous contributors making blankets, twiddle muffs, teddies and other items in abundance, going through bags of wool. They enjoy being able to give something to the hospital community. 

In 2024-25 our knitters and crafters produced 635 items for our patients including 142 lap blankets, 85 teddies, 260 twiddle muffs and 81 cannula sleeves.  

John is Chair of the NBT Patient and Carer Partnership Group. He was also a volunteer during the pandemic, throughout all the lockdowns, delivering medication from the Pharmacy to the wards around the hospital. As a Patient and Carer Partner, John gets involved in a variety of activities from being on interview or award panels to giving feedback on policies, strategies or patient-facing information. 

Joyce and Steve with Maudie 

Joyce and Steve love to volunteer with their dog Maudie and our patients and staff love when our furry friends come visiting. Pets As Therapy Volunteers are dedicated pet owners who visit our patients and staff with their pets. Joyce and Steve love the joy it brings to patients and them in return too.  

Fiona with Millie

Fiona and Millie also volunteer with us in conjunction with Pets As Therapy. The value of pet ‘therapy’ and animal visits is widely accepted as a powerful aid to stimulation and communication. Studies have shown the presence of companion animals can improve the wellbeing of patients and lower the rate of anxiety, simply by making the hospital environment happier, more enjoyable and less forbidding.    

Here are Sandra, Daphne and Rosemary – Shop Manager and volunteers at Southmead League of Friends. The League of Friends has been supporting Southmead Hospital for 47 years by funding requests for the benefit of patients and staff, with most of its money coming through the coffee shop just around the corner from this photo. They don't just provide reasonably priced refreshments, but a friendly face and listening ear to staff and the public. To date the League has funded over £1.8million of requests for the hospital and look set to reach £2million this year!    

Ron is a befriender and helps keep our allotment in great shape! Ron volunteers on the Stroke Ward and visits patients. He shares his experience of having a stroke, which can provide hope and reassurance. He also provides a friendly face and a relaxed conversation, usually telling people about the pumpkin he planted that went missing! Here you can see Ron in the shed by the allotment which is just behind the new Surgical Centre and open to anyone to have a little wander around and sit in the sunshine. 

Jenny is also a befriender on the Stroke ward. Jenny was a patient following a stroke in 2022 where she was visited by fellow befriender Ron (also photographed) who inspired her to volunteer. Although Ron only discovered this during this photoshoot when they both had a lovely catch-up in between modelling for photos! Jenny is a friendly face to patients, she’ll point to the bed and tell her story. Patients discuss their own experiences and see her as a role model to recovery. A highlight was when Jenny saw the physiotherapist who taught her to walk again once she was back as a volunteer, and he was delighted to see her walking so well. 

Moss is a Move Maker and can be seen driving the Buggy here in the Atrium. As a photographer himself Moss has many talents including contributing to the journeys of 40,000+ patients who have been driven by the buggy this past year alone. Our Move Makers help direct people from the entrance but also drive, wheel or sight guide patients to where they need to go. They really make sure our patients and carers are supported on their journey in the hospital.

Becky is a Patient Partner who joined after her experience with our Maternity department. Becky likes that volunteering is a small opportunity to give back to the community. It is also a chance to use her voice and support other patients. She also supports by giving feedback on patient-facing information and carrying out walks around the ward to evaluate the environment to ensure good patient experience in all areas. Becky says, “part of the reason I wanted to volunteer was coming from a minority group my experience with the maternity department was very good and I also wanted to get that side across. I believe when I joined, at the time, there was a lack of diversity from people wanting to volunteer and it was something I wanted to represent in a positive way.” We are grateful to have Becky as a partner. 

Jackie is a Ward Support Volunteer for the Percy Phillips Ward in Maternity. She joined us whilst in the UK for a year as she wanted to give back to the community and try something new. Jackie commented on volunteering at NBT: “The experience has been amazing. The staff have been very welcoming. They are all so hardworking. I enjoy the little things I can do to help them. I would say, the highlight of my shift is interacting with the patients when I visit them with the tea trolley.”

Here are some of our Volunteer Musicians. We currently have 82 active volunteer musicians. They have gifted us 687 hours of music in 2024-2025. They also won the recent ‘We Support NBT’ Award at the NBT Staff Awards. The youngest musician started volunteering at seven years old and can be seen in the group photo with his two siblings. Some of these volunteers have supported us for over 20 years! Our musicians bring so much joy to patients, visitors and staff, with many commenting through our feedback methods or directly to them at the end of a song.

Annie volunteers as Ward Support at Gate 24. She also volunteers with several other groups in Bristol some of which include Caring in Bristol and running a litter picking group in Bishopston. We really do have such amazing volunteers at NBT! Our Ward Support volunteers are there for a friendly chat to patients, a listening ear, raising any concerns, making sure drinks are topped up and various other things. They are always supervised and supported by our staff. 

Emily is one of our peer mentor volunteers. She loves giving her time to people and being a listening ear to those that haven't felt heard. Our peer mentors support others living with a similar condition. We have 11 different groups who use their lived experience to signpost patients to help their recovery or manage their symptoms.  Peer Mentoring offers an opportunity to have a one-to-one chat and share personal experiences and stories either face to face or over the telephone. It is intended to complement the care and education patients and carers receive from the healthcare team and we are so grateful to our volunteers for supporting as peer mentors.   

Sue is a Purple Butterfly volunteer, supporting patients and their families who are experiencing end of life care. This role works closely with our Palliative Care staff team. At this difficult time, they can offer one-to-one support, compassionate listening, comfort and companionship. Each visit is unique; sometimes silent company or just a gentle presence is all that is needed. The volunteers can offer respite so that the patient’s visitor is able to take a short break away from the bedside, in the knowledge their loved one is not alone. Part of the volunteer’s role can include reading, playing music, simply chatting or sitting in silence.

Tim and Anita are two of nearly 100 Move Makers who help patients and visitors navigate our hospitals. They stand out with their wonderful bright pink tops and matching trainers. Tim and his wife Anita decided to become Move Makers in honour of Tim’s sister Kay who was not only an amazing sister but also one of the original Move Makers. Anita loves meeting inspirational patients and says, “it is an amazing experience, every shift is different”.

Katie joined NBT as a Living Well Volunteer after being supported by NBT herself. Through this role she supports other young women with Breast Cancer. As a Patient Partner she gets involved in a variety of activities. More recently this has been our Patient Conversations which is our way of getting live feedback while someone is either an inpatient or outpatient waiting for their appointment. Katie will have an informal chat with our patients and carers to see how their experience is going and then be able to feed that back to the department. If there is anything that can be improved in real time, we aim to do this or take on the feedback for the future.

Martin volunteers with our Discharge Lounge at Gate 24. He volunteers for enjoyment and is valued by the team. Martin supports and provides a ‘listening ear’ to both patients and their families who are being discharged after stays or appointments in hospital and who maybe are experiencing a wide range of emotions at this time. Being a volunteer at NBT is always interesting, worthwhile and Martin says he highly recommends it!

Liz volunteers with our Macmillan Wellbeing Centre. From meet and greet to providing refreshments, craft workshops and Christmas stalls, she is an all-round star. She started volunteering at Frenchay Hospital when she retired, teamed up with her friend, the late Pat Webb, and they both came to Southmead at the same time. Liz creates beautiful paper flowers, some of which have been used as a bouquet for a hospital wedding. She also provides monthly craft sessions for cancer patients.

Julia is an honorary chaplain and Maria is a chaplaincy volunteer. They are both based at the Sanctuary at Gate 30 but they visit all across the Hospital providing a listening ear to anyone who needs them, whether the person is religious or not.  Julia shared, “I am constantly learning from all I come into contact with whilst working within the Chaplaincy team.” All chaplaincy volunteers are trained to support spiritual, pastoral, and religious care for people in the hospital.

Anela is a Patient and Carer Partner. She got involved with NBT through the Bristol Sight Loss Council and has done a huge amount across the Trust to improve access for those with a visual impairment. Her work involves delivering sight loss awareness training to staff, advocating for and testing accessibility for our Digital Patient Engagement projects, reviewing and supporting new projects looking at the physical space and more. She also sits on the Patient and Carer Partnership group which involves feeding into meetings, projects, policies and various work to ensure NBT represents all the Patients and Carers it serves.

Richard is one of three volunteers who work with our Major Trauma Team. The volunteers make phone calls to patients two weeks after they’ve been discharged from hospital. On the calls the patients are asked a standard set of questions to assess how they are managing and get feedback from their time in Southmead Hospital. Any concerns or questions raised by the patients in the calls are fed back to trauma practitioners who call the patient back to resolve any issues. Feedback from the calls is compiled into quarterly reports and passed back to the clinical specialties to contribute to continual improvement of the service.

Megan volunteers as a Ward Support on Ward 27A Cardiology. For Megan, volunteering has given her the opportunity to work within a medical environment, which she wants to pursue as a career in the future. “Volunteering is a great opportunity to learn new things and experience an area you may wish to move into in the future”, she said. Megan is off to University in September and we wish her all the best. Who knows, we may see her back as a Staff Member at NBT in the future!

Dai is a Patient Feedback Volunteer. Our Feedback Volunteers help with any current surveys we have and with Patient Conversations. Dai speaks to a variety of patient and carers across the hospital, to understand how their experience has been. This helps the different departments and wider Trust consider what is going well and what they can improve. Dai says the highlight for him is meeting people whether that is the nurses, doctors, patients and other volunteers.

Sue is one of the lovely Move Makers who you’ll see when coming into the Emergency Department (ED). We have Move Makers across ED, the entrance to the Brunel Building and at Cossham Hospital. You’ll spot the Move Makers in pink or green tops, and they are always ready to help. Sue volunteered throughout the pandemic, “which was challenging but very rewarding”. She deals with anxious relatives and friends as part of her role and she knows how frightening the ED department can be, so is great at supporting our visitors and giving them a bit of calming reassurance, directions or a cup of tea.