An update on Tammy’s work in Zimbabwe

From left: Denford Gudyanga, Case Manager; Tendai Mayuni, Programmes Officer, M&E; Charity Shonai, Case Manager; Tammy Palmer and Mlambo Nefasi, Case Manager

In July we heard from Community Psychiatric Nurse Tammy Palmer, who was planning to travel to Zimbabwe to help spread the success of the Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) model of care. Here’s her first update.

I am now three months into my year-long career break, during which I’m supporting work to introduce the EIP model through the Zimbabwe National Association for Mental Health (ZIMNAMH), a non-governmental organisation that advocates for the rights of people with mental health problems.

International Volunteer Day

5 December is International Volunteer Day. One of our volunteers, Thomas, has written his volunteering story.

How I volunteer

I am now an established volunteer for Nottingham Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, with all of my work based at their offices at Duncan Macmillan House on Portchester Road.

With well-established skills in software development, and more recently, qualifications and skills in website related development, my main area of volunteering is in developing a more dynamic front end to a website used for managing and reporting on the feedback of patients on the services which they have received from the NHS. More specifically, I will be replacing graphical information presented as a static picture with graphics generated dynamically from information in a database.

With experience of being on the autistic spectrum, I also volunteer for Story Shop afternoons. On such afternoons, a number of us travel to a venue (a local teaching hospital, the offices of the local authority, or a public library) to give an account of our health related experiences to successive groups of medical students, local authority employees, or interested members of the public. On such afternoons, I talk about my experiences of being on the autistic spectrum.