Hospital Radio run by volunteers for the patients, staff and visitors of Halton General Hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire - Registered Charity No 1068428

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What is hospital radio?    What songs are played? What good does it do?

Competition winners for Brindley tickets

Thanks to the Dining Room - see more on the About Us page

We held our special event awareness stall in the Dining Room at the hospital on Thursday 4 June 2009 to celebrate the 25th annual Volunteers Week

Our volunteers put on an exhibition display  to give information and leaflets - and of course the best in music.  <click the pic on the left to see a larger pic

Here's Margaret, Derry and Pam in the dining Room watching everyone else eat to the music. Find out more about Volunteers Week here

 

Thank you to the anonymous person who donated two CD box sets of 100 songs on each set (left in a carrier bag of a well-known now defunct music outlet beginning with Z!)  These tracks are exactly the kind of music we believe we should be playing, so they are very gratefully received.  Another one appeared mysteriously too, containing 100 soul classics, which we played for our Volunteers Week stall.  And on 16 June 09 we found another 5 CD box set had appeared from Anon... this time of the 1970s and in a carrier bag from a well known music outlet with a dog on it - thank you, whoever you are!

Hospital Broadcasting Week in the first week of April saw our volunteers with an awareness stall at Entrance 2 of Halton General Hospital.  More visitors to the hospital now know that there is a radio service and people generously gave £56.95 in our collection box.  This is a fantastic response, and we are equally grateful for people's valuable time given too

New starters

Another two trainees - Will Holloway and John Kenwright - began training in June 09

New design

Credit is due to Jason Hill for the design of our new musical logo at the top of the page.  It links in with the NHS logo which is blue, and being a bass clef, also harmonises (sorry!) with our sister station Radio General in Warrington who have a blue and white treble clef

What is hospital radio? 

Do you know someone in hospital?  You can find the station that serves their hospital and request a song or send them a message.  Just click on the logo below to go to the site of the organisation for hospital radio in the whole of the UK

Are you interested in joining hospital broadcasting?  If so, you can find out what we need people to do on our Join page

Patients on the wards can use the Radio Halton freephone to request a mention or a song to help the time pass more easily.  Then, settle back into bed or an easy chair and relax to favourite music through ...

...the bedside headset - it's all technology from more than 40 years ago - no wires involved here, just a pipe into the console on the wall with a volume knob and a channel knob - so it is literally piped music! 

• Radio Halton is on channel 3 and

• BBC Radio 2 is on channel 2

What kind of music do people ask to hear?  Well, here's our most popular music over last year:

Top 30 most requested songs during 2008

National Hospital Request Chart

Mark Snowdon of Radio General in Warrington put together a national chart from hospitals all over the UK, which was heard on Radio Halton during February 2009.  See 2008's Top 40 as well as past years' charts at http://www.requestcharts.org.uk

News on the benefits of music in hospital

"Listening to your favourite music can improve the health of your heart, a study has shown

Scientists have found that happy music causes the lining of blood vessels to expand, increasing the amount of blood flow

And the benefits of joyful music are even greater than that of laughter, according to the researchers from the University of Maryland

They say the effect could be down to the release of endorphins, which are released by the brain to induce the feeling of well-being

Study leader Dr Michael Miller said: 'We had previously demonstrated that positive emotions, such as laughter, were good for vascular health.' The type of music did not matter, as long as it made the listener 'feel good', he said"

Source:  Daily Mail - By Daniel Martin 12 November 2008

The power of the World Wide Web

We received a request via email in September 08 to play "Spanish Eyes" for a lady on ward B3 from her family in Australia.  The message was passed on to all our Monday presenters and we hope the lady heard and enjoyed her song

Competition winners for shows at The Brindley

Janet Sandiford from the ECG Department was the lucky winner of 2 tickets to see soul legend Geno Washington on Sat 20 June 09.  She correctly answered our question: Who had a number 1 hit in 1980 with a tribute song "Geno"? and it was Dexy's Midnight Runners.  Check for tickets availability at thebrindley.org.uk

Mrs E W Frain won tickets to go to The Brindley on Thursday 12 March 09 to see comedian Mark Watson on his UK tour

We asked a competition question in January 2009 for a pair of tickets for the concert by Russian pianist Alexander Karpeyev with Northerly Winds on Saturday 31 January 09 at The Brindley.  We asked "A Steinway is a high quality make of what instrument?"  Louise Williams correctly answered "piano" and enjoyed the concert along with her daughter who plays piano and flute

Sue Harrison was the lucky winner of a pair of tickets to see Beverley Craven at The Brindley on Wed 26 November 08 courtesy of Radio Halton

Book competition coming soon

Bookworms should keep their ears peeled (do worms have ears?) for Margaret Longworth's book competition where you can win one of the books she's reviewed - on Tuesday mornings

New jingles

We had a flying visit from Canada's Karl King who has produced many of our jingles out of the goodness of his heart for no charge

Jim Wood showed him round our studio in June 2008

Listen out for each presenter's jingles Karl's made over the last few months

Updated by:            The Webmistress 17 June 2009

Registered Charity No 1068428