By ALESHA CAPONE
TERRY Wilson helps turn sadness into smiles among the patients at Sunshine Hospital.
The Kings Park resident, 65, began volunteering with Western Health’s social support program, Triple T, last year.
The ‘TTT’ team meets with patients who have dementia, delirium or a cognitive impairment, and helps gather information about their usual routine.
This information is used by hospital staff to help maintain a patient’s routine and, in turn, hopefully reduce issues such as delirium.
Mr Wilson said he and wife Joanne, began volunteering with Western Health after he had a brush with death in 2011.
“I was taken to hospital, very close to death. I was suffering from renal failure through prostate cancer and I had been ignoring the signs because I was in a deep depression,” Mr Wilson said.
“But I’ve been through radiotherapy and came out of that pretty good.”
“The staff at Footscray Hospital did such a good job, I wanted to give something back.
“They did such a good job and nothing I do can ever repay it.”
With National Volunteer Week beginning this Monday, Mr Wilson encouraged other former hospital patients to sign up as volunteers with Western Health.
“I know what patients go through in hospital and when you’re lying in that bed all sorts of stuff goes through your head,” he said.
“If you’ve walked the walk, you can talk the talk.”
Mr Wilson said he greatly enjoyed his work on the TTT team, especially chatting to patients.
“It helps them greatly and turns their frown upside down,” he said.
While Mr Wilson talks to patients in the GEM, dialysis and rehab wards, Joanne is a tea-lady in Outpatients and the women’s clinic.
“You could say she’s also TTT – she is serving tea three days a week,” Mr Wilson said.
See http://www.wh.org.au/Volunteers/index.aspx for more information.
