Elsewhere in the hospital, volunteers are supporting elderly patients who may be spending Christmas alone.<\/p>\n
On Ward 17, patients share their views about staff and volunteers giving up their day.<\/p>\n
“They’re wonderful,” says one elderly gentleman.<\/p>\n
Another says he is “not really a Christmas person”, but appreciates the company.<\/p>\n
When a volunteer jokes that he will return singing Christmas carols and with mince pies, one patient laughs and replies: “Don’t bother.”<\/p>\n
The volunteer they are talking about is Vinod Chawla, a retired financial advisor, originally from Bradford.<\/p>\n
Vinod sits with patients at risk of falls, chats to those with no visitors and sometimes helps with feeding.<\/p>\n
“I love coming here just to see patients smile,” he says. “A lot of the patients don’t get visitors. Sometimes just sitting down and having a chat makes me happy.”<\/p>\n
A nurse passing through the ward pauses to offer her own thoughts.<\/p>\n
She calls Vinod “fabulous”, saying he is “very helpful, very pleasant”, and “always there for the patients”.<\/p>\n
“He helps us out as well,” she adds. “He’s an absolutely amazing man.”<\/p>\n
For those spending Christmas Day stuck in a hospital bed, it is the small human moments \u2013 a conversation, a smile, a quiet act of kindness \u2013 that cut through the noise, reminding them that even here, and even today, they are not alone.<\/p>\n
And for Brian, Bilal and Vinod, working Christmas Day does not mean missing out entirely. <\/p>\n
Once their shifts are done, they too will go home \u2013 to families, to children, to meals shared later in the day. <\/p>\n
And as Christmas continues beyond the hospital doors, they leave knowing they have shared some festive cheer, and helped deliver a little seasonal warmth where it is needed most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elsewhere in the hospital, volunteers are supporting elderly patients who may be spending Christmas alone. On Ward 17,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-335889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}