There is a diverse range of opportunities within the National Health Service (NHS). Scotland’s health boards run a variety of services for which they need volunteers.

There will be a number of general opportunities that are available throughout the NHS as well as ones that are unique to specific areas.

An idea of some of the different types of work available is:

• visiting and helping in wards
• peer support programmes
• providing assistance at clinics
• hospital guides
• organising the loan of books and magazines to patients

There are even opportunities to help in areas that you wouldn’t normally associate with health care such as hospital radio.

Getting Involved

There are a number of different ways you can get involved in volunteering in the NHS. Your local Volunteer Centre will have details of available voluntary opportunities within the NHS – you can use the Volunteer Scotland network to search for placements that are available in your area. If you have a specific idea of something you’d like to do, or, want to discuss a few different options within an area or hospital then it would be a good idea to contact the local NHS Voluntary Services Manager. It is their job to coordinate the voluntary opportunities for specific hospital area. That means they’re someone useful to contact as they’ll have lots of up to date information on what you can get involved in. To find out who your local NHS Voluntary Services manager is contact the Young Scot InfoLine on 0808 801 0338.