This St
udent Volunteering Week (13-19 February) we would like to thank all the students who offer their time and volunteer in a range of roles at West London NHS Trust.
We spoke to Jasmine Dancel, a postgraduate student at the University of Westminster, about her volunteering experience at the Trust.
My name is Jasmine, I am a Health and Wellbeing Volunteer and my volunteer supervisor is the Staff Engagement and Wellbeing Lead, Karandeep Virdee. I am inspired by the work and I enjoy contributing my ideas and discussing how they can be implemented.
I was always interested in volunteering in different areas and in the past I have enjoyed volunteering in other roles. I decided to volunteer at the West London NHS Trust for this role as it’s an area that really interests me and each day is different with a lot of room to come up with new ideas.
Volunteering at the Trust helped me develop my planning and creative skills. With my supervisor’s help, I was able to come up with more ideas and research. This also helped my university work, e.g. in terms of developing skills around time management.
I was not expecting the team to be so bonded and looking out for each other. If someone needs help, another department will help you. I definitely value that in a workplace and in an organisation I choose to volunteer.
I was speaking to my supervisor about this and he has recommended pathways within the psychology route I could explore and potentially use this experience for my future career.
I would strongly recommend volunteering at the Trust to anyone. You will be helping an NHS Trust to deliver outstanding patient care and it’s also a beneficial experience for the volunteers.
Jasmine is helping us evaluate our A-Z Rewards booklet. This will allow us to evaluate what recognition and well-being activities we could potentially offer teams in the Trust. But also give teams and managers ideas of what they can do within their own team space to recognise and create fun working environments. We spoke about her ideas, and how we could add these ideas to our After dark social events / activities. This would help make her contributions useful not only for the Health & Wellbeing, recognition side of things, but also for the social aspect of working with West London NHS Trust.
Students have a lot to offer and a lot to gain through volunteering. If you are a student and are inspired by Jasmine’s story, please consider our current volunteering opportunities, and get in touch with us on how you can volunteer at the West London NHS Trust.
Find out more about the volunteering opportunities available through our Better Impact web page.