This year our Christmas Appeal revolves around the need for us to secure funding for our Second Endocrine Nurse. 

We are delighted to announce that we have now appointed our Second Endocrine Nurse! We welcomed Darshna Patel onto the team a few weeks ago, supporting Pauline to run the Nurse Helpline on new extended hours. Darshna has already received some excellent feedback and even with two nurses, we are STILL missing calls underlining the absolute need for the Second Endocrine Nurse. 

We are extremely grateful to The James Tudor Foundation who have provided us with a grant for £6,750 so that we could begin the recruitment process immediately, The Hospital Saturday Fund who donated £2,000 as well as everyone who donated when we launched the appeal.  In total, we have raised just over £11,000 but ideally, we need to raise double this amount so that we can cover the full costs for the first year. 

During the past 18 months, demand for all of our Helplines has increased exponentially and at times we have been absolutely overwhelmed. The number of calls received by our Endocrine Nurse Helpline, in particular, has reached unprecedented levels. Whilst our Nurse, Pauline Whittingham, has endeavoured to answer as many of your calls as possible, since only she operates this phone line, the simple reality is that she was unable to answer every single call. Due to the high demand for this service, during 2021 alone we have actually missed double the amount of calls that we have been able to answer. For example, from January to July 2021 Pauline answered 442 calls but missed 891 calls.

What you say about the Endocrine Nurse Helpline:

   “I have called on numerous occasions and I always went to my appointment full of confidence thanks to the information that I had been provided with.”  Catherine

“The level of support that I received from your nurse was absolutely priceless. I cannot say thank you enough.” Amardeep

“My support from the wonderful Endocrine nurse was
invaluable. I am so grateful.” – Brian