21/05/2025
** 5 YEAR AWARD **
Delighted to celebrate 5 years of volunteering at Northern Health today along with many other volunteers who were all equally valued and appreciated.
Together we all are working to help others and give a voice to those who cannot advocate for themselves (for various reasons; language, disability, inexperience, trauma, addiction, poverty).
I assist in the Patient Representative space where I offer the layman's Patient experience in adverse outcomes ("sentinel") events usually in maternity& child, but sometimes colorectal too. Be it an unexpected delay, injury to mother or child, still born, suboptimal experience - I sit on panels with experts and I try to advocate for the mother/child/family from their point of view based on my lived experience.
I've been involved in the project as a consumer for Northern Health and I've been a guest speaker several times. Maternity units, for staff PD (20+) or in a grand-round setting to 200+ all hospital staff sharing my lived experience of birth trauma, birth injury, ilesotomy, multiple operations, PTSD and how that impacted our whole family.
I have been incredibly well supported by the Volunteers & Consumer team at NH, and I highly, highly, recommend getting involved if you are passionate in this space.
As I say, I cannot change what happened to me (or my family) but I might be able to impact change for those to come.
Special mention to my book "When Mummy went to hospital" as that too was recognised and celebrated today for it's positive impact. Connor and Molly are the illustrators of that book so it is sentimental, but mostly it's a valuable resource for families when Mum goes to hospital and things are uncertain.
Thanks again to the support of Northern Health for creating and open, inclusive and passionate volunteer space for all of us.
