Request Collecting It's A Dog's Life
Rugby Hospital Radio member Chris Wade brought a new dimension to the service's request collecting rounds when he took his guide dog onto the wards at the Hospital of St Cross. Secretary Phil Smith witnessed the phenomenon at first hand when he spent an evening following Chris and his co-presenter on a ward visit.
When Chris Wade joined Rugby Hospital Radio in July 2000, we had to make a special request to the Hospital Trust for something we'd not asked for before: permission for him to take his guide dog onto the wards. The hospital management gave us their full blessing and a new dimension was added to our Thursday request round.
Chris has been blind since the age of 11. When he joined us, his guide dog at the time was Dudley. As soon as Dudley started appearing on the wards with Chris we heard that the reaction was very positive, with many patients enjoying the chance to see and pet the dog.
Contact with a friendly, loveable animal is certainly a great morale booster, particularly for people in the often worrying and anxious position of being in hospital.
Since then, Dudley has stopped working as a guide and is enjoying his retirement, still living with Chris as a pet.
Chris's current dog is Victor, a two year old picked from a litter of nine and schooled at Leamington Guide Dog Training Centre. The word soon spread that the youthful Victor was proving himself to be a worthy successor to Dudley.
My regular programme goes out just before the Thursday request show, whilst the requests are being collected. Up to now, I'd not had the chance to accompany Chris around the wards and witness 'the Dudley effect' for myself. Now that Victor had settled in, it was time to finally drag myself away from the desk and see this unique - for us - request round for myself.
Chris and co-presenter Kathy Wheeler set off for tonight's scheduled ward, Mulberry (St Cross's newer wards are all named after types of tree).
St Cross serves Rugby, a town of approximately 60,000 and has seven full-time wards. RHR collect requests on every day of the year, visiting one or two of the wards each day on a pre-planned rota.
With many patients from Rugby also being treated at Coventry's Walsgrave Hospital, St Cross's patients are mainly drawn from the older age group, with an average age estimated at about 70 and only a small minority of people aged under 50. Consequently, the station's output reflects this, with music content being 'middle-of-the-road', 'easy on the ear' or whatever phrase you wish to use.
