to ask for your experiences of NHS Vaccination Steward support volunteering?

[Toomuchstuffwillkillme]

Really interested to hear from fellow Mumsnetters who have been (or know someone who has been) volunteering via the RVS/NHS responder app to help out at vaccination centres. Over the past few months I have done a dozen or so shifts at various different vaccination sites and had very mixed experiences. But there is no easy way to feed this back to the organisers, which I’m finding increasingly frustrating.

So have you had good or bad experiences?

It is amazing that so many people are willing to volunteer to help, and I think on the whole the vaccination program is running brilliantly. I just don’t always feel the volunteers are always being made best use of (especially when we’re being told how much of a strain the NHS is under elsewhere!)

As a volunteer, if you’re given a useful/fulfilling job to do (e.g. checking people in at the door, calling people through when it is time for their vaccine, filling in vaccine cards, talking to people who are anxious/elderly/non-English speaking/disabled etc. and helping them to have a better experience) then a shift can be really worthwhile. Sometimes I have been one of 3 volunteers at a site which could easily use 6, and it is incredibly busy.

However - if a site has asked for 8 volunteers and they only have useful things to do for 2 people, it can be frustrating, deathly boring and tbh a real waste of time. Volunteers do quite often leave early in these scenarios, but why were they ever requested there in the first place? Do they really expect people to stand around for 6+ hours pointing the way to the exit (yes, sometimes they do) or could they perhaps stick a big arrow on the wall instead? Sometimes I have felt really appreciated as a volunteer, sometimes the absolute opposite.

I think it would be useful to be able to feed back via the responder app to the individual vaccination sites how each volunteer shift went, with the aim of trying to improve things/share best practice. Some places are evidently so much better organised than others!

Also – I’m guessing most people have had at least 1 vaccine by now, so

• Did you have your temperature checked on the way in to get your vaccine?
• Were you asked to wear a ‘medical’ mask?
• Did you notice whether volunteers or staff were sanitising chairs in between uses?

Some places – no temp checks, any old face covering is fine, you’re lucky if you get a seat let alone a sanitised chair. Other places get through absolutely shedloads of gloves/aprons/masks/wipes/sanitiser. Both ends of the spectrum are getting vaccines into arms, some at a far more efficient rate than others.

If you’re a health professional, do you think any of the above are particularly important?

I haven't been on the volunteering side but I had my first vaccine on Sunday and was baffled by the amount of people in there. One by the outside door administering sanitiser by hand (just a table with bottles would suffice), one to "meet and greet" before you joined the queue (it was clear how to queue and an arrow on the floor would remove any remaining doubt), one person patrolling the queue between check in and being vaccinated but doing no more than asking people to "keep the line moving" which they were, they're British after all...no fewer than four people stood by a clock with people on seats waiting to leave, none of them doing anything and yes, a person stood by the exit saying "please exit this way" which was obvious as there were signs and it was the only way to leave without going back through the whole queueing system again.

They could have had 7 fewer people in there, madness!

Yes Daisy this is what really irks me (and tbf it is not the case everywhere) - do you not think those 7 superfluous people could perhaps have been more use helping the NHS out somewhere else?

All these clinics and ops and treatment cancelled right left and centre because there aren't enough staff and yet people more than happy to volunteer their time to help out for free who aren't doing anything remotely useful

Where I went had no temperature checks, well organised with sanitiser and mask exchange but let a queue build up inside when it should have been outside. Don't care though, just grateful to have both jabs.

There were the right number of volunteers, no one seemed to have nothing to do.

I have been volunteering as a steward for a couple of months, I have been to two different sites and I have also had my own two vaccinations at a third site.

At the site I have volunteered at the most, I have usually been based inside at a desk and have been checking people in on the iPad. There have often been two people doing this whereas one would easily manage it, in fact we often take turns just to have something to do, I have had shifts where we have checked in forty people in four hours. If there were just one person on the desk, there would be another volunteer close enough to step in if that person needed the loo.

At the same place I have also been on the door with the hand gel, this role also involves occasionally holding people at the door if there are too many people inside. This site has one volunteer in the car park, they don’t do anything other than point to the buIlding, I have never quite been sure why as it is the only building that can be seen from the car park, still it is only one person. There are about eight volunteers directing people around the site, however this is quite a large site and some people are even driven over in golf buggies.

At the other site I have volunteered at, I have been in the car park, vaguely directing traffic but also checking people have appointments as they enter and doing the “checking in”. However I understand they have to go through this process again, in which case they are being checked in twice totally unnecessarily. After I have sent people on their way, the next volunteer is stood right outside the vaccination centre doorway and their job is to tell people to go inside. 😅

At the site where I have had my own vaccinations, there are usually about eight volunteers in the car park! This is probably the most unnecessary over staffing I have come across, I really could not even begin to guess what they have all been told to do.

Overall, I think the vaccination centres could easily handle far more vaccinations than they do and in my experience have far more volunteers than they currently need. I think GP surgeries should stop doing jabs and start dealing with other health matters which have arguably been neglected and let the vaccination centres use up the massively wasted capacity.

-Did you have your temperature checked on the way in to get your vaccine? No
-Were you asked to wear a ‘medical’ mask? No. I’ve never heard of this happening at any vaccination
-Did you notice whether volunteers or staff were sanitising chairs in between uses? yes I did notice that.

Vaccination centre at one of the most prominent London hospitals.

I second the idea of feedback especially around number of volunteers/shift. I do shifts at a very busy site where 1100 people are vaccinated each day and it was very efficiently run, designated roles and obviously plenty to do. The medium size site where i had both my jabs was again very efficient. However I did a shift this week where 4 volunteers were requested by the very bossy woman in charge and only 2 volunteers were really needed for such a small site and so sat twiddling my thumbs for nearly 7 hours (95% of patients who had booked did turn up and there was only a handful of walk ins). I would much rather be deployed where i can be useful and super busy as the time passes quickly!!

Also apart from temp checks and hand sanitising, the sanitising of chairs between visitors has stopped for most centres round here so thats one less person required per shift!

I’ve volunteered and really enjoyed it. However, I would agree that there are lots of people and am not convinced that they are all needed. It’s great that there are so many people willing to contribute, but it has put me off from signing up for further shifts as I have very limited free time. I wouldn’t want to be rushed off my feet as a volunteer, and there’s always the risk that volunteers won’t turn up, but there are definitely massive inefficiencies. I wouldn’t want to feed this back to the team as they are all lovely, and there are a lot of regular volunteers who have formed a friendship group so I’m not sure how open to feedback they’d be. It seems to be “the more the merrier” but I’d rather the resources were spread more thinly (as they would be if people were being paid) and that way you wouldn’t end up with there being gaps in the rotas later on down the line. It’s been good to be part of something and if they were desperate I would return, but I’d rather do something that was actually needed.

I’ve felt similar when I’ve volunteered at school events too, being sent to man a stall on my own with literally no customers for a couple of hours and missing out on going round with my family. Again, I wouldn’t want to criticise the PTA but I can’t help thinking that most things just work better with a handful of keen, regular volunteers rather than roping in loads of people just to beef up the numbers.

Sorry @Toomuchstuffwillkillme but I did have a little chuckle about you talking about clinics, ops and treatments being cancelled because there aren’t enough staff and the implication that volunteers could be helping with that. Volunteers play an incredibly valuable role in the NHS and we are lucky to have them (thank you to everyone who does volunteer) but I don’t think we are at the stage of needing them perform surgery just yet 😂

I haven’t had my vaccine yet so I don’t have an experience to share but I guess a lot of volunteers are only qualified to point to exits, dispense hand sanitiser etc.

YANBU, I hope you do find someone to feed this back to. Really grateful to anyone volunteering to help at vaccination centres and the wider NHS.

I work in a large out patients department and for the last 6-8 months we have had 2 volunteers sat on the front desk checking temperatures. This frees up our nurses who were doing it previously. They have been an absolute god send tbh and I'm so grateful to them for this. However some days are mad busy and some days are quiet. Do we need 2 people sat at this desk at all times? No, probably not. But people might need the loo or a break or they might get a bit bored on their own. Our patients can be abusive to staff and usually the front line get this first so having 2 people is useful.

I really hope our volunteers don't feel like they are underutilised. It can be a difficult balance.

@countbackfromten

Sorry *@Toomuchstuffwillkillme* but I did have a little chuckle about you talking about clinics, ops and treatments being cancelled because there aren’t enough staff and the implication that volunteers could be helping with that. Volunteers play an incredibly valuable role in the NHS and we are lucky to have them (thank you to everyone who does volunteer) but I don’t think we are at the stage of needing them perform surgery just yet 😂

I think you may have misunderstood @countbackfromten - there are people being paid by the NHS at several places to do basic admin jobs that could 100% be done by volunteers, because in several centres I have as an unpaid volunteer done the exact same task that people are being paid to do at different centres.

I have also, at the most over-staffed centres, seen nurses being paid to do vaccinations while St Johns vaccination-trained volunteers stand around next to them twiddling their thumbs.

I wasn't suggesting we should be performing surgery just yet... only that if we could find ways to make the vaccination program more efficient it might have positive knock-on effects elsewhere!

oops cross posted with JADS - yes exactly that!

@Toomuchstuffwillkillme I didn’t misunderstand, I was amused and made a light hearted comment to that effect. I mean not like I’m exhausted after dealing with the pandemic for a year and now trying to catch up with the backlog so might make a joke about things.

My local vaccine centre is well run but there does seem to a lot of ‘busy work’ being done.

1 person to check you in with your number and tell you where your vaccination pod is, as your drive in to the car park
1 person (less than 200 yards later) to repeat what the check in person said and tell you that the parking marshall will point you to a space.
1 person to point you to a parking space
2 people outside the vaccine pod checking appointment times, ID, checking for clean masks and giving out sanitiser.
1 person at door of pod pointing to manned desk (also arrows on the floor) , also monitoring/assisting queue positions.
1 person manning a desk, checking ID again , DOB and address and whether this this vaccine 1 or 2
1 person sat with nurse, filling in the card and checking details.
1 SJA person manning the recovery area, advising people to remain for 15 mins and cleaning (also manned by an hcp).

Forgot to say, door pod person was taking temps

I have pretty much stopped volunteering as the site near me is always overstaffed.

There are also a few regular volunteers who have a very fixed view of the way things should be done, they are all slightly different and I got a bit fed up of being told off!

My experience of working at a volunteer centre is that you need to remember that by the time you've done a couple of shifts, it all seems perfectly straightforward and familiar to you - but to someone who's turned up for a jab, is a bit nervous, never been there before it's not straightforward at all.

We've had people come in through the exit and start wandering around, ignoring all the people queuing up at the front door. They ignore the check in tables, unless they're pointed at them; they try and walk past the doctors who need to check their forms; they try and leave through the entrance, pushing against the incoming people; they very, very frequently forget that they should be wearing masks... So a volunteer asking what seems like a 'bleeding obvious' question is sometimes very necessary!

And don't get me started on what can happen in the carpark where - again - stressed anxious drivers (who maybe haven't driven that much lately) have hit other cars and nearly run over the volunteers telling them where to park safely.

I volunteer at a GP hub, usually one session a week doing 800 to 1400 vax each session.
We do have what seems like an excess of vols doing the "wait here" "go there" pointing but occasionally we have fewer vols and things don't run as smoothly. With older age group, we frequently have to leave our position to manoeuvre wheelchairs, or deal with couples where one has dementia and they need to be kept together.
If we have to rely on an arrow rather than a vol pointing the way, we get a lot of people trying to go out via the in door.
I mostly do data entry rather than pointing

I don’t understand why car park marshals are needed, everyone can manage to park at Sainsbury’s!
Nobody took my temperature or asked me to wear a different mask. Several volunteers were pointing out where to go on the conveyor belt system in a large hub, from waiting chair to speak to someone to waiting chair to vaccinator to waiting chair. I think they were sanitising the chairs but I have no idea why that was necessary as only my clothed backside had been in contact with it.
I had my second jab in Superdrug, much quicker as everything was done by one person with no need to move along the conveyor belt.