{"id":5373,"date":"2016-05-19T13:13:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T03:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=5373"},"modified":"2016-05-19T14:21:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T04:21:14","slug":"rch-volunteers-receive-minister-for-health-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/rch-volunteers-receive-minister-for-health-award\/","title":{"rendered":"RCH volunteers receive Minister for Health Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

The RCH Emergency Department (ED) volunteer team has won the 2016 Minister for Health Volunteer Award in the \u2018Improving the Patient Experience\u2019 category.<\/p>\n

Nick Pace, Nick Fulkoski, Lynda Cameron and Ranjeet Starr received the award for their work improving our patients\u2019 experience of care in the demanding Emergency Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it\u2019s impossible to put a price on the work volunteers do supporting some of our most sick and vulnerable Victorians, today\u2019s awards go some way to honouring them for their tireless work,\u201d Minister for Health Jill Hennessy said.<\/p>\n

Latest figures show more than 160,000 people volunteer in health organisations across Victoria.<\/p>\n

\"ED<\/p>\n

\u201cVolunteers are the backbone of our health system. It\u2019s no coincidence that as the best health system in Australia, Victoria is also home to our most dedicated and talented volunteers,\u201d Minister Hennessy\u00a0added.<\/p>\n

As a direct result of his experiences as an after-hours volunteer in ED, last year RCH volunteer Ranjeet Starr (pictured far right) resigned his Corporate Communications\/PR role\u00a0to become a Youth Residential Worker, and has begun retraining as a nurse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to contribute,\u201d Ranjeet said. \u201cI have been pretty lucky with my life so far and I wanted to give something back.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, every Saturday night Ranjeet spends three hours in the ED, providing support to families, patients and siblings, as well as training new volunteers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do see a lot of very confronting situations. You see a lot of raw human emotion \u2013 people aren\u2019t always at their best. I tell a lot of the new volunteers you need to focus on providing the simple things that can make a big difference,\u201d Ranjeet\u00a0added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do a lot of meeting and greeting people in the waiting room, an enormous amount of getting tea, coffee and other drinks, we can prepare food for patients and assist medical and nursing staff, and we can provide respite care if the parents want to go and move their car or go and get some fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the term \u2018life changing\u2019 is overused in general, but I really think this is life changing because it gives you a greater perspective on life; no matter what problems I have in my personal life, it reminds me not to get caught up in it \u2013 it\u2019s not that big a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congratulations to the team!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RCH Emergency Department volunteer team wins the 2016 Minister for Health Volunteer Award in the \u2018Improving the Patient Experience\u2019 category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5373"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5378,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373\/revisions\/5378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}