24 Hour Broadcasting

In recent years it had become apparent that although we had been broadcasting in the Hospital since it opened in 1984, the number of patients that actually know we exist is relatively low.

This was partly because most of our members were unable to spare the time to visit patients. This meant patient visiting and request collecting was left to those volunteers who presented the request shows.

The upshot of this was that even if we had enough willing members to present request shows seven days a week, and the average number of wards visited per evening was three, we could still only visit each ward about once a week. At Milton Keynes General Hospital, the average stay is just three days, so the chance of a volunteer catching a particular patient was very slight.

Realising that this was unacceptable we set out to improve the situation. We asked ourselves "If a patient is not specifically targeted by a request collector, when is the time they would listen to Hospital Radio?". We concluded after much discussion that it would probably be in the daytime if they had no visitors, or at night if they couldn't sleep.

As most of our volunteers work during the day, we could only offer live presenter led programming in the evening and re-broadcast local radio stations at all other times. One possible solution would be to target recruitment at retired or unemployed people. This is still being considered, but would take several years to achieve.

The solution we chose was to purchase an Automatic Computerised Playout System. After researching the products carefully we purchased the neccesary equipment from a company called P-Squared in Hull. Their products, Myriad and Q-Next, have been running in several Commercial and Hospital Radio Stations across the country, including Stoke Mandeville - just down the road from us in Aylesbury.

Q-Next has the ability to schedule music and information bulletins 24 hours a day, whilst Myriad allows our presenters to use the music and jingles on the computer during their live shows.

Currently, during the day and through the night, the system plays a variety of music, jingles and entertainment shows, and recently we began introducing patient information bulletins, drama productions and the system will be shortly configured to automatically switch to a news bulletin every hour. We are already starting to add pre-recorded "live" shows to the system, giving the impression that a "real person" is broadcasting, even though we can't man the studios at all times.

The system is not intended to replace real people, but to provide an additional service from us at Hospital Radio to you, the patients on the wards. We are still actively encouraging new members to join, as there is still plenty of scope for development.

The system has been running continuously since just before Christmas 1999.

The system was officially launched by the Mayor of Milton Keynes on 15th April 2000, and the event was attended by Chairman of the Trust, Mrs Margaret Hales, and Mr Eddie Whittaker - a non executive director. Also present was Maureen Gladwin, Volunteer Services Co-ordinator. The Mayor also had the opportunity to visit several patients and took part in an interview promoting his charity, The Buckinghamshire Association for the Blind.