FEDs Offer Comfort and Reassurance

By RANKIN, Janine

The Palmerston North St John FEDs are a year old. Health reporter Janine Rankin visited the hospital’s emergency department to find out how the St John volunteers are making a difference. ———— ——– Student Andrea Calder’s father is a doctor, her mother is a counsellor, and she reckons that gave her a double dose of caring and sharing genes.

Adamant that she’s more interested in people than performing procedures on them, she’s found an outlet for her desire to make a difference in people’s lives as a volunteer in Palmerston North Hospital’s emergency department.

As a Friend of ED, she walks as confidently as any staff member around the unit and waiting area introducing herself to patients and families.

“Hi, I’m Andrea, and I’m not a nurse. Is there anything I can do?”

Her role is to comfort, inform and support.

Often all people want is the reassurance they’ve not been forgotten, and someone to talk to distract them from an often anxious wait.

Waiting is a fact of life in the ED, but most people handle it better for having some friendly company.

“I tell them, they don’t call you patience for nothing.

“It’s a very boring place for people, and at the same time, quite scary, especially if they have no-one with them.”

Someone to talk to is often really good medicine, and she hears life stories, and provides a listening ear as people unburden on a friendly stranger.

Usually she sits with a patient, but sometimes it’s worried friends or relatives in most need of a bit of support.

There are a handful of people who reject approaches, and others who are just too sick to be bothered.

It’s part of the volunteer job to work out who most needs a companion, and to know when to melt away and make room for the medical teams.

“Sometimes during the four-hour shift you form quite a bond with people, and I hardly ever leave on time because I want to tell people I’m off and wish them well.

“The worst part for me is not knowing what happens to them afterward.”

She remembers one elderly lady in particular who’d had a stroke and was extremely unwell and agitated. She just sat and held her hand for a couple of hours, which kept her calm.

It’s the sort of human touch that staff in a department that sees an average of 100 but sometimes as many as 140 patients through its 22 beds every day don’t have time for.

Charge nurse Carrie Naylor- Williams says the FEDs are greatly appreciated by staff.

“It relieves the stress level to know there’s someone there to advocate for patients, to offer that extra reassurance that we don’t have time to give.”

The Friends of the Emergency Department scheme was first tried in Auckland in 2001. Since then it has spread to 18 hospitals, with more than 700 volunteers involved around New Zealand.

The Palmerston North service runs six days a week from 10am until 10pm with a core of just over 30 volunteers. More helpers are needed to extend the service to seven days.

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(c) 2008 Evening Standard; Palmerston North, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.