Bradford hospital patients in need of spiritual, pastoral, or religious guidance can now use an innovative new app on their smartphone or PC to access help.
The app is the first of its kind in the country and has been funded by Bradford Hospitals’ Charity – the official NHS charity of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It was developed to meet the growing need for support from the Trust’s chaplaincy service, re-named the Spiritual Pastoral and Religious Care (SPaRC) team.
The web-based app (accessed via https://sparc.bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk/) contains a wealth of information, self-help support and multi-faith guidance in written, audio and video formats collated by the team who work from both Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke’s Hospital.
Mohammed Arshad, Head of the SPaRC team and Imam, explained that he had a relatively small team and that technology was the best way to supplement their service.
“We thought to ourselves, how do we reach around 1,100 beds? Technology is the best way,” said Mohammed.
“We didn’t have anything like this during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we did learn a lot during that time. We know that having this resource now means that we can reach everyone in our hospitals.”
Mohammed said the app was tailor made for patients in Bradford using his team’s wealth of experience visiting wards, speaking to patients and staff.
“When developing the app, we asked ourselves how do patients feel when they are in hospital and what would benefit them? What are they going through? And what is their hospital journey like? We know they are feeling anxiety, stress and asking questions like ‘why me?’ So, we wanted to create an app which addressed all of this using videos and audio clips, which people can revisit whenever they want and ponder in their own time.”
Mohammed said clinical staff had helped to introduce the app to patients. “The patient and staff feedback has been fantastic,” he said. In fact the app has been such a success that other health trusts and organisations have expressed an interest in it, he added. There are also plans to add more faiths and a paediatric section for younger patients.
“We are very grateful to Bradford Hospitals’ Charity for believing in us, having faith in our plans and understanding where we wanted to go with this,” said Mohammed.
Sharon Milner, Director of Bradford Hospitals’ Charity, said: “We are delighted to support such an innovative and worthy piece of technology. Supporting the wellbeing of so many people from a wide variety of faith and non-faith backgrounds is very humbling, and we are proud to be the first in the country to achieve this.
“We would certainly like to give further support to simple, yet widely effective projects such as this one, in the future.
“We are delighted to be able to deliver, in such a meaningful and worthwhile way, to the diverse communities we serve across Bradford and beyond.”
For more information about Bradford Hospitals’ Charity, or to make a donation, please visit Bradford Hospitals Charity
