This week is Volunteers' Week, a UK-wide event honouring the incredible contributions of volunteers.
For the past three years, Rachel Grellier has volunteered with Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust (SHSC) as a patient safety partner and co-lead for the fatigue management course.
Read Rachel's inspiring story of how a brain injury in 2019 transformed her life and how she now helps us to care for the people of Sheffield.
I was a middle-aged professional until 2019 when I had a brain injury.
My world changed and I could no longer work. If I manage my fatigue I am still able to function relatively well.
For me, volunteering with SHSC has been a way of doing something interesting and fulfilling – I’m part of a team that understands the challenges I face.
I have been volunteering for three years now. I wanted to support the Sheffield Community Brain Injury Rehabilitation Team (SCBIRT) because they had greatly helped me and my partner cope with the ‘new me’. The volunteers on the fatigue management course I attended made me feel that there was real hope for the future and I am now one of those volunteers!
A few times a year (when SCBIRT need me and when I have the time – they never put pressure on me to say yes), I spend about three hours a week working with a SCBIRT professional, helping people who have had a brain injury begin to understand how to manage their fatigue and the challenges that come with it. It means a huge amount to me that I can give something back to the team who made such a difference to my life and help people to manage life after a brain injury.
Recently I’ve become a patient safety partner (PSP). At SHSC we provide the service user/family/carer perspective on how we respond to incidents which have affected service users. My training for this was very manageable and interesting. Now I attend weekly meetings alongside SHSC staff and help decide how best we respond to and learn from service user safety incidents.
I really enjoy being part of a team and my role of presenting the view of an ‘ordinary person’. This is sometimes different to how health professionals think about an event. It’s really important that we view incidents from different perspectives as it helps to give a more complete picture, and respond better. This PSP volunteering draws more on my work experience before I was ill – so it’s a way of using the skills that the ‘old me’ had in a way that the ‘new me’ can cope with.
Volunteering with SHSC has helped me feel better about myself and support others who are going through difficult times. I now help the health professionals who helped me, and I’ve also made some great new friends. Volunteering can seem confusing and sometimes a bit overwhelming at the beginning but sticking with it until I found where I best fitted in was worth it. Volunteering has made my life much more interesting and enjoyable!
