In December, members of NurSoc (Nursing Society) Trinity Long (NurSoc chair), Caroline Brown (Social Sec), Elena Hancock (Secretary), Ruth Kearns-Smith (Treasurer) decided to spread some holiday cheer for patients stuck in Derriford Hospital over the festive period through donations, including from students and staff at the University of Plymouth.
Caroline Brown (Social Sec) shared with us more information about the success of the charity donation…
"Trinity, the NurSoc chair, organised the plan for the gift drive after being inspired by Eve, NurSoc’s previous PR and Fundraising Officer.
We set up 2 weekends of in-person donation stations and an Amazon wish list so that people unable to make it to campus could take part.
We got 100s of donations from people across a number of societies and were able to create over 70 bags of individually bagged donations as well as lots of stock for wards.
This is important as wards can’t provide everything that a patient will need during their time in hospital, such as specific conditioners to help with cold capping for chemotherapy patients and personal hygiene products. We’ve been able to organise a large quantity of both of these items that we can donate to the charity team within the hospital who will distribute all donations out to those who need them.
Trinity Long, the NurSoc chair, organised the plan for the gift drive. Caroline Brown, the social secretary, took all Amazon orders and packaged them up individually in her evenings after placement. Ruth was able to deliver the donations received one weekend to a safe location as there were so many they couldn’t be carried by hand! Trinity, Caroline, Elena and Ruth all sacrificed their weekends to run the in-person donation stations and assisted with the delivery of the donations to Derriford on the 19th of December.
The gifts were so well received by the hospital.
Thank you to everyone who donated to this event, staff at the hospital who will be distributing items across the ward and the security team who gave us lenience with parking (it took a while to get everything into the hospital)!
Thank you to family and friends who helped us get the items to the hospital; it wouldn’t have been possible without you! Finally, we’d like to thank Lacrosse who encouraged their members to bring a donation to this event for their final practice of the semester.
We’d like to thank Lacrosse for their amazing contribution to our gift drive as well, your donations helped us massively!
This was so important to us as student nurses; in our placements we see patients who don’t have access to toiletries or little luxuries that they can bring with them. We hope that these donations will have a positive impact on their recipient’s time in hospital and make their journeys a little easier.
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