Volunteers delivering medication from hospital to home during Covid-19
17th November 2020
Submitted by Troy Smith, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH)
When Covid-19 struck, all NNUH volunteers were stood down. This included Jamie's volunteer transport service as(initially) it was deemed unsafe to transport patients home in the Charity Wheelchair accessible vehicles. Jamie (pictured) and Charlie quickly developed a volunteer led medication delivery service to NNUH outpatients across Norfolk and Waveney, working alongside the Diabetes Eye team that had also been stood down.
Doctors were able to prescribe drugs for patients following online outpatient appointments and they were then delivered daily by the volunteers. Over 1,076 meds were delivered during lockdown and this service is still running today.
In May, to keep NNUH cancer patients safe the Norfolk and Norwich's oncology department known as the Weybourne Unit was moved off site to a safer location 1.5 miles away. Never having transported chemo off site before, Jamie and Charlie offered to transport this using a car donated by a local finance company. After training in case of spillages, Jamie, Charlie and volunteers completed 500 chemo runs in three months which enabled the NNUH to treat approx. 60 patients a day – 90% of their cancer patients. Jamie, Charlie and the volunteers have been magnificent in their work and are a credit to the hospital.
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