A re-ward-ing experience

It was a gorgeous evening to be heading back to the Royal London Hospital to be reunited with the Barts Volunteers team.

Our task tonight

We met in the café area, adjacent to A&E, to be briefed by Nancy on tonight’s activities. It was a busy night of activity: Tom and Ricardo were taking us up to the 13th and 14th floors to help stock the ward trolleys with everything from activity packs to colouring pencils for patients.

We were also distributing evening newspapers and puzzle books to patients on both floors.

Our team tonight

Our team slowly grew: we welcomed James and Nirmay for their first Monday evening tasks in Tower Hamlets - and Georgia for her first ever GoodGym! (Huge shout-out to Nirmay who came up with tonight’s pun).

And as for other firsts, our Ricardo was not only an active GoodGymer this evening, now a well established Barts Volunteer, he was also helping Tom and Nancy to lead the task!

It was decided we should take the stairs to the 14th floor as tonight’s fitness fix. A speedy (fairly painless?) climb meant that we weren’t too far behind Tom and the trolley on arrival at the 14th floor.

And so to our task...

Tom and Ricardo wasted no time in showing us the ward trolley ropes. With every base covered from combs to miniature toothpastes and headphones, the trolley inventory is thorough.

Dividing into two teams – one on trolley replenishment and the remainder of the team heading out onto the wards – we covered the whole of the 14th floor before heading down to the 13th floor.

It was a lively and surprisingly fast-paced task. Tom and Ricardo did a brilliant job of navigating corridor after corridor; ward after ward, ensuring we headed only to suitable bays, and the team all did a great job in offering papers and magazines to many appreciative patients and relatives. This is was a feelgood task at its finest.

The timesped by (even by Tower Hamlets standards) and it was 8:30 by the time we were saying our cheerios to Tom and Ricardo, and heading out into a surprisingly warm October night.

What an evening. Well done to everyone involved.

Until next time.