The Royal Free Charity has set up a best wishes e-card service which allows friends and relatives to send cards to patients remotely.

The service gives friends and relatives the opportunity to send an e-card, a handmade designed card or to book a Skype call with a patient. Volunteers at the Royal Free Charity then design and deliver the cards or arrange for an iPad to be taken to the patient for a Skype call.

Richard Scarth, director of operations at the Royal Free Charity, said: “This is a really simplistic service, but it will have a big impact on our patients and their experience in hospital. It provides people who live far away or who cannot visit their loved ones a chance to wish them well and communicate with them in times when they cannot be there. 

“The interaction is important, as the volunteers who deliver the cards or the iPad get talking to the patients as well, which gives them some new company and can help with their recovery. We want this service to continue on, so that our patients can receive happy new year and birthday cards from their loved ones. We are also planning on extending this service so that patients can send thank you cards to staff who treated them. 

“This is a great service which creates more ways for our patient’s loved ones to be there for them while they are in hospital.” 

Visit the service on the Royal Free Charity website.

ENDS

Image: Examples of hand made and e-cards

Notes to editors

About the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

The Royal Free began as a pioneering organisation and continues to play a leading role in the care of patients. Our mission is to provide world class expertise and local care. In the 21st century, the Royal Free London continues to lead improvements in healthcare.

The Royal Free London attracts patients from across the country and beyond to its specialist services in liver and kidney transplantation, haemophilia, renal care, HIV, infectious diseases, plastic surgery, immunology, Parkinson's disease, vascular surgery, cardiology, amyloidosis and scleroderma and we are a member of the academic health science partnership UCLPartners.

In July 2014 Barnet Hospital and Chase Farm Hospital became part of the Royal Free London. Read 'A bigger trust, a better future'.