Inside Torbay Hospital Radio and the volunteers behind the mic

I’m not quite sure how, but last week I was the subject of two interviews.

One as the face of the station (I’m sure that was a mistake) in an interview for ITV news, conducted in our studio here at Torbay Hospital. And then again as a guest on Alex’s Island, a regular weekly show, where Alex Nagy presents his take on something akin to Desert Island Discs.

Things around the hospital are often newsworthy, it’s often featured in this newspaper, so it was a great honour to be asked to be the one to speak with ITV. 

To let them know about the hard work that the presenters at the station put in to produce hours of entertaining shows and how it impacts on the patients who listen around the hospital. 

It was of course great to be featured, we are immensely proud of our hi-tech studio, which has been completely funded by the efforts of our members in the form of outside broadcasts, Christmas draws and collection of donations.

There were some areas that they wished to focus on, in their quest to find out what we do. Firstly and this a common question, how often do we broadcast and what do we do? You may be surprised to learn that we broadcast 24/7, 365 days of the year. We do not have presenters in all that time of course, there are limits to what you can expect from a team of dedicated volunteers.

The station has three main ways of reaching our core audience, the patients and the staff around the hospital. We broadcast on 95.9FM If patients have no traditional radio we will provide them with a dedicated personal radio with headphones.  You can listen online at our website, where you will find a listen live button, or you can  hear us on your smart speaker, this is more appropriate for people listening at home of course. We even have a listen again facility accessed via Mixcloud and we have some podcasts available, which can be accessed via Amazon and Spotify. 

It is always quite nerve wracking when you have a camera pointing at you, especially when their second question is ‘Why do you volunteer?’ There are a number of answers to this as people come into the station for a variety of reasons. We have a fairly mature team, some like me who have retired and want to give back and help others, volunteering is a great way to do this. Our younger members get immense satisfaction in helping others in what can be a fun and entertaining manner. And of course we all get the chance to play at being a DJ.

It’s often difficult to pinpoint the third question posed, ‘Why do you think it's important hospital radio stations still exist?’ But a number of things always come to mind, most of us have had a stay in hospital. No matter how the staff try it can feel cold, clinical, and disorienting. A familiar voice, a local accent, a bit of humour, well that’s medicine of a different kind. When I am on air I try and imagine I am having a conversation with someone.

Some volunteers go to wards to collect requests, this is often the only non-medical interaction they have had that day and if no other reason this why Hospital Radio still remains important and relevant into today’s world.

As for my second interview you can listen to my musical choices by following this link.