Volunteer vaccinator: from fashion to freedom

I don’t usually wear a fleece but proud to wear the St John Ambulance volunteer’s uniform.

I was nervous when I completed the St John Ambulance volunteer vaccinator application form. ‘Congratulations, your application has been accepted’…gulp! What if I get the virus? The national lockdown meant that our boutique has been closed since Christmas and as this decreased my workload I wondered if volunteering would help us all reach toward the exit sign.

Even though I filled the form out myself, I feel strange confessing that I hesitated as the application progressed. Stay home, save lives was ringing in my ears. Laid out in facts I reasoned that as a healthly adult without allergies, disabilities and so on I was in a good position to be able to help with the vaccine rollout, also

Completing application forms was the easy part, the training and assessments were intense. Becoming a volunteer vaccinator was a serious role and I was given over twently modules of learning together with assessments that I had to complete and pass as a minimum before my in-person training. I left university a long time ago and whereas I write notes in my daily diary and scribble ‘to do’ lists I was completely unprepared for the number of notepads and pens I would go through. My hand ached as dormant muscles that held pens warmed up. The pass mark for the assessments was 80% and required pre-social media and channel hopping levels of attention.

The training day was wonderful once it actually started. Never travel in London on a Sunday, I know this but still booked my training on a Sunday. This was it, I was going to learn how to actually push a real needle into a real person. I’ve never administered an injection of any type such as for IVF or diabetes and wondered whether I would feel nauseous at that point and chicken out. Of course the training didn’t include real people but a rubber pad simulating an arm and skin but the training was fantastic. The St John Ambulance team are really kind, patient and combined with all the assessments it gave me a real sense of confidence for when I would eventually be deployed at a vaccination centre. The in-person training day was also the first time that I had been in a room full of people in almost four months and the first time I had to engage in small talk, wow, what is that again?

Photo with my friend, I felt so lucky that we shared our first day at the Science Museum as volunteers.

I have since been a volunteer vaccinator at the Science Museum in London, meaning I get to visit one of my favourite parts of London regularly. Volunteering is easily the most fulfilling thing I have done since the pandemic started a year ago. I have been at the Science Museum during the negative news cycles about the Astra Zeneca vaccine and by far the majority of people coming to get their vaccine have been so excited and happy to be taking their first step towards freedom and normality, brushing off any concerns. That’s the stiff upper lip I like!