Reflecting on the Friends of Frome Hospital (FoFH) recent Annual General Meeting, chairman Peter Smith said the year had been an exciting one with not only support to the hospital itself, but with continuing development of its outreach projects in the community.
“The AGM is our shop front, not only to highlight our superb award-winning local hospital, but to acknowledge the dedication of our volunteering team,” he sai. “During the past year commitment by the volunteers has been made to replant and refresh the hospital’s Therapy Garden for the benefit of in-patients and their families, and we have been able to provide financial support to procure additional patient comfort furnishings to enhance a new look at the Birthing Unit.
“Beyond the hospital, the ‘Friends’ Community Defibrillator flagship project has seen further publically available defibrillators installed at Frome Agricultural Market Standerwick and in the Kingsway shopping precinct, with another unit ordered for installation at the Asda superstore to cover the 450 new housing development at Edmunds Park. Also, in a radical new development, and working in conjunction with Tytherington-based educational health safety group Creative Aquatics, the ‘Friends’ have been introducing classroom CPR/defibrillator awareness sessions to students at the town’s two middle schools.
“At the meeting, as part of support to the FoFH outreach projects in the community, we were delighted to introduce Helen Hodgson, specialist cardiac physiologist who gave a short presentation about a global Atrial Fibrillation ‘awareness week’ where her local group would be demonstrating their pre-emptive cardiac monitoring programme with state-of-the-art technology, sponsored by the FoFH, in the town centre on Saturday 25th November.
“Our appeal for help has seen a number of requests from would-be future medical personnel to gain some hands-on experience at the hospital, and the Friends themselves have strengthened the defibrillator guardian team to maintain the 20-plus units – but would welcome recruiting one or two more volunteers.
“We are one of the most active voluntary groups in the town, but we are in need of a few more, hopefully younger, new faces to come forward to help with the continuing development of FoFH towards 2020 and beyond. In particular, we would like to find a younger IT whizzkid to manage our website and see us through the Facebook and Twitter links to communicate better with our community here in Frome.”
Contact can be made with the Friends of Frome Hospital, email: friendsof fromehospital@gmail.com
Pictured: Community defibrillator in Kingsway shopping precinct
