Radio Stations That Lift Spirits in Hospitals

Volunteer-run broadcasters are a British tradition. The New York Times reports that among the hundreds of community radios in the UK, hospital radio stations are one of the less well-known: tiny operations, staffed by volunteers, that you would never know existed unless you’d been a patient here.

Despite the proliferation of technologies for listening to audio, hospital radio has ironically become more popular among patients, due to its unique position for personalization. Lisa Wells, a nurse treating Covid-19 patients at the Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham, said in an email that she had been happy to collect requests because the radio was good for patients’ families as much as for the patients themselves. It gave people peace of mind “that somebody’s just gone that extra mile to personalize what is such a dreadful time,” she said.