Train

& support

your volunteers, they will feel much

confident

The NHS is a great place to volunteer and gain experience. We’ve set up a NHS volunteer programme in our NHS GP practice, here is our volunteer induction checklist. Think through how you will recruit and train volunteers as well as get people onboard. The process we used as well as the training guides are here.

NHS volunteer checklist

Summary

Make sure you leave plenty of time to onboard volunteers. We have included some of the training material we use.

Training

Volunteers come from different backgrounds so it is important that they are up speed with your policies. They may not be familiar with things like safeguarding.

Test

Test knowledge using quizzes and role play with groups of volunteers.

We produced a volunteer checklist that people could refer to but also arranged training and role play to test their understanding of skills. Once the volunteers felt comfortable, they were deployed on working on projects. Volunteers also helped one another in their roles. This is based on the findings of an independent evaluation by ICHP.

Topics for volunteer checklist

There were some key areas that wanted to highlight in our training programme. The key principle to observe was patient safety and confidentiality.

We made sure volunteers understood and had clear instructions needed to support patients and had the resources to do so.

Above all, we put together an information volunteering checklist which covered areas such as communication, safeguarding, boundaries and an outline of policies. This was designed to improve the volunteer’s knowledge skills and confidence in being able to deliver. We arranged regular check-in with the manager of the programme.

Time needed: 5 minutes

NHS volunteer recruitment & onboarding

Documentation and process.
Have a clear process of what patients need to do and what their role will be. Here is some of the information we used.
Engage patients early.
Engage volunteers early and frequently, giving them opportunities to meet staff and each other – this was highlighted as one of the most successful elements of the project by both staff and volunteers, helping increase motivation and build relationships
Have a project lead
Volunteers highlighted that having a clear and responsive point of contact was really helpful to be able to ask any questions and get support