A HOSPITAL radio service run by a dedicated team of volunteers was able to fulfill more than 5,000 patient requests in 2020 despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Bournemouth-based Hospital Radio Bedside (HRB) continued to broadcast live programmes to Royal Bournemouth and Poole hospital patients for all but weeks of last year.

Despite the charity's studio complex being closed from March to June 2020, thanks to the efforts of the HRB engineering team, 16 of the station's presenters were able to broadcast live shows from their homes.

These included three request shows each week with volunteers phoning the wards at Royal Bournemouth and Poole Hospitals to obtain patients' requests, kindly collected by hospital staff.

In June of last year, the HRB volunteers returned to the studio complex with extensive Covid controlsThis meant that the request shows returned on 6 days a week and many telephone calls to the studios from patients in hospital began to flood in.

This represented a huge boost that the presenters missed when broadcasting from home as patient interaction is HRB's number one priority.

In total, despite the virus restrictions, the station still played a 5,088 patient requests in 2020. This included 2,770 requests from Royal Bournemouth and 2,318 from Poole hospitals, with 1,128 phoned in to the studios by patients.

Prior to March 2020, the station boasted 22 volunteers who visited patients to personally collect their choice of music.

It is hoped that this practise will be able to restart as soon as it is safe.

To find out more about HRB, listen live to their programmes or become a Friend of HRB visit hospitalradiobedside.co.uk