VOLUNTEERS IN “THE BIG, UNHAPPY WARDS’’

By MICHAEL CLARKE, Our activities at the hospital gradually developed in two broad directions. We decided that even though personal contact could lead to deprivation when-it was discontinued. we would develoD a one-student-to- Medical Student, Utiiversity of Bristol

Every week, seventy of us go out to a mental sub- normality hospital, and have been doing so for the last year. We were never made welcome by the institution as a unit, nor by the people holding positions within it.

The hospital had never encountered volunteers before. One of the consultants told us that, from his experience, it was important that we did not get involved with the patients-it would probably harm them when we went away if we did. He suggested instead that, since many of us were medical students, we should go and carry out a survey of the finger- prints of all the patients and that, through the mediance of finger-print taking, we should get and give a sub-lethal dose of personal contact with the patients.

Not a good start-so we just went into the wards of our own accord. Just what do you do? Most of the patients did not come to us-they had never seen anything like us before. You can make contact with the liveliest patients-you dance with them, have meaningless conversation-but you certainly don’t let them hug and kiss you; you have no white coat to keep you clean. You walk away; that’s great- you’ve always got that option. The patients never ask “Why are you running away from me?”

We didn’t talk to nurses for weeks but finally we decided they were the people who were relevant. They were the people who spent all day in the foul and smelly day-rooms. A nursing auxiliary has far more relevance to the patients’ lives on a wet Saturday afternoon than any doctor or high-numbered nurse in the present set up. Why hadn’t we introduced ourselves to the nurses before? We were in fact working together for the good of the patients.

In a way, the nurses resented us. We came and made contact with the patients. We were basically taking on what should have been the main aspect of a nurse’s work. Of course, the nurses only have time to feed, water, dress and clean the patients. We thought how very humiliating it is for nurses of our own age to have to clean up urine and faeces of patients-almost as if preparing them to be acceptable to us transiently visiting.

one patient situation in different ar‘eas of the hospital. Personal contact has, on the whole, been very successful and has certainly not been lethal. For the students it is relaxing and rewarding to work towards uninhibited and uncomplicated relationships some- times quite difficult to find in student life. In fact, the whole thing was pretty therapeutic for us: students are quite “hung-up” people.

The second direction of our activities was to accept the facts of life of institutions with the big, unhappy wards. We went in groups to these wards initially ust to bring predictable things like music, painting or dancing. Soon groups of students became attached to wards and, indeed, to patients in them.

We soon felt, however, that we were becoming institutionalised ourselves. We were running out of ideas: it’s just not enough to go into a ward, sing, dance in circles and go-it’s not normal. At about this time, we decided it was not enough just to work, we must also know why inarticulate human-beings were being denied their basic human rights. We quickly adopted a hot-headed, unrealistic attitude. Why hadn’t doctors in these hospitals spoken for their patients? We became very interested in the implications of community care. We discovered, however, that this hospital had no plans for com- munity care for its inappropriately hospitalised patients. Believe it or not, the consultants wanted to rebuild and expand this hospital ! We gradually mellowed in our attitude though. There was no alternative career structure for nurses and doctors if these hospitals were cut down : they were being forced into the practice of having a vested interest in an institution which they didn’t really support.

We decided that as an institution this hospital was bad; we had come up against a wall regarding what we could do in the ward situation. So, we took the patients out of that environment to an environment of our own making. We took the kids swimming, took the activity sessions off the wards, took the patients out in our coach, for which the hospital has now kindly condescended to pay. Recognition had finally come when this happened-six months after we had started, when students’ organisations were more than f.200 poorer.

Ideas must flow: now we are going to other sub- normality hospitals to get ideas, since no ideas have come from within the people in the hospital except junior and student nurses. We’ll take the kids and adults camping this summer and, who knows, we might even practise what we say and set up a hostel in the community with students and mentally handicapped together !

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