Dedicated volunteer 'spreads glitter' at Christmas and all year round at Wigan's hospitals

The dedicated volunteer loves speaking to patients and staff across Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) all year round and the festive season is particularly special.

She will dress as an elf and join Father Christmas to spend time making people smile.

She said: “I love it. I have just been speaking to Santa and we are going there on Christmas Day. We have been invited to Rainbow ward for Christmas and have not done it since Covid.

"I used to do it every year – getting to Rainbow ward at 6.30am and wrapping the gifts up with the play team so they are ready for us to go out on the wards.

"Believe me, what a lovely time. I wouldn’t do anything else on Christmas Day. It’s amazing.”

After handing out presents to children on Rainbow ward, Veronika and Father Christmas will visit the maternity ward to see babies born on Christmas Day and tour other wards across the hospital.

Veronika said: “As soon as we go on the wards, I get an amazing feeling. They are always shouting and Father Christmas shouts ‘merry Christmas’. We get presents out for not just the children, but the staff and other patients too. They all want their picture taken with Santa.

"I’m really looking forward to it.”

Veronika volunteers with WWL as often as she can, especially over the festive season.

"I volunteer as much as I can and I never get sick of it,” she said.

"It’s like spreading the love wherever I go. It’s spreading that glitter. I feel like I have a glitter ball inside me. At Christmas it bursts.”

Veronika started volunteering with WWL 12 years ago and has never looked back.

She said: “One of my friends was volunteering for WWL and I asked all about it. One day I thought I would come to the hospital and inquire. I didn’t know what I would be doing and whether I would like it, but I came and inquired and a lovely lady was great and went through everything with me.”

Veronika started by volunteering on the help desk at Wigan Infirmary, helping patients and other visitors to the hospital.

She has since branched out to help in a range of other areas too.

She said: “I saw an advert for hospital radio. I didn’t know that they had a hospital radio and that it’s at Wrightington. I asked if I could have a look around and I did and I got involved with that as well.

"I gained confidence so I bought my own recorder and started going round the hospital and that was amazing.”

Veronika loves making programmes for the hospital’s radio station and revealing what goes on, introducing people to things like the hydro-pool and bone bank.

"There’s an awful lot of people at the trust who do so many things – I don’t know what they do – so I wanted to ask people what they do and what it means,” she said.

"Then I got various people in – nurses, doctors, anybody that will speak to me, even domestics. It’s lovely to find out what they do.”

Being treated in hospital can be difficult for many people and Veronika enjoys spending time with patients. Before the pandemic, she particularly liked to support those receiving cancer care.

She said: "I used to ask if anybody didn’t have visitors and I would go to see those people. It was lovely.

"I remember talking to one lady in particular. We talked and talked, we laughed, and her chemo machine beeped and that was it – the chemo had finished but we had just laughed.”

She goes around the wards at all of the hospitals to speak to patients, but also has conversations with staff to support them.

Veronika organised tours of the hip museum at Wrightington to mark the 90th anniversary of the hospital and 50th anniversary of the radio station, which proved to be of particular interest for people preparing for surgery and those who had already had it.

Veronika’s volunteer efforts come in many forms and she is currently working on two special projects, the details of which are mostly under wraps.

About one project, she said: “I found out a doctor at Wrightington’s father used to work at Wigan in the 80s. I met two nurses at Wrightington who used to work with his father at Wigan. There are a few volunteers who worked with him as well. I think it’s now got so much that we are a family.

"I put the heading of culture, but I have not quite finished the project yet, but it will be good.”

Her hours and hours of voluntary work have not gone unnoticed, as Veronika won the Hidden Gem Award at WWL’s recent STAR (Staff Thanks and Recognition) Awards.

She said: “I cannot begin to tell you how I felt. I think I was the most shocked person there. It was like the Oscars.”

It was the third time Veronika had been honoured this year alone, as she was also given a Special Recognition Award for Outstanding Contribution to the NHS and was highly commended in the health and social care hero category at Wigan Council’s Our Town Awards.

It is clear how much Veronika loves volunteering – and she hopes others will join her by helping out at WWL.

She said: “I definitely would encourage people to volunteer. If anybody has even an hour to spare, please come along. There are not just the jobs I do, there are so many other jobs. You can make long-lasting friends, but also you are doing this for patients and staff."

To find out more about volunteering….