All news & stories

It takes a very special person to be a hospital volunteer.

Did you know that our volunteers have been providing wonderful care and support to our hospitals’ patients, families, visitors and staff for over 93 years?   It’s been a week since we temporarily suspended our volunteer service because of Covid-19, and we’ve been wondering if this might be the first time that our volunteers haven’t been on duty since the service began? Does anyone know if there were volunteers in our hospitals during WWII, the Polio outbreaks or other times? If so, we’d to love to hear from you.

The hospital volunteer service at Wellington Hospital was first established by the Ladies Auxiliary in 1928, and later in 1973 the famous Pink Ladies were also set up by nursing tutor Ella McLeod to help patients on the hospital wards with anything from refreshing water for flowers, reading newspapers or even buying cigarettes – which is totally unthinkable now!

We’d love you to share some of your most interesting experiences of volunteering at Wellington Hospital, get in touch at admin@whf.org.nz

Wellington Hospitals Foundation has been looking after and growing the volunteer service since 2007 and we are extremely fortunate to now have over 450 dedicated hospital volunteers offering their time and talents across our Wellington and Kenepuru hospitals. These people kindly assist many thousands of patients every year as Hospital Guides, as carers in our Emergency Department, on reception in the Intensive Care Unit, in the gift shop and as ward volunteers. There are also many of you who greatly enhance the hospital environment with your piano playing and other music and our pet therapy programmes; as well as hundreds of volunteer knitters, sewers and quilters who produce beautiful items for our Neonatal Unit, patients and their families.

We are thinking of all our wonderful volunteers at this difficult time and we hope you are back with us soon.

Rick and Oxford make a fantastic team, bringing joy and comfort to patients, families and staff

Pink Ladies at Wellington Regional Hospital

Hospital Guides help thousands of people find their way around our hospitals every year