LEBANON — More than 100 Dartmouth-Hitchcock volunteers and guests honored longtime volunteer Nancy Bassett and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Palliative Care physician Charles Whang at the hospital’s annual volunteer awards luncheon held April 12 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Lebanon.
Bassett, of Pomfret, received the Edith Amsden Award for Outstanding Service, while Whang was honored with the Anne-Lee Verville Award, which recognizes a staff member who “demonstrates leadership in the integration, education and ongoing support of volunteers in Dartmouth-Hitchcock health care settings.”
“Volunteers are the backbone of every single hospital,” Dartmouth-Hitchcock CEO and President Joanne M. Conroy said at the event. More than 900 people volunteer across the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Healthcare system.
Gretchen Maynard, president of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Volunteers Leadership Board, introduced former board of trustees chairwoman Anne-Lee Verville, who presented Whang with the inaugural award named in her honor. The board of trustees created the award in 2018 to recognize Verville’s 10 years of service as a board member. Verville noted that Whang has helped integrate volunteers into all cultural and operational aspects of his division’s work and includes volunteers in the palliative care team’s weekly “Wisdom Wednesday” meetings.
“Dr. Whang is considered by the volunteers to be ‘unfailingly open, cheerful and helpful, going well beyond what one would expect. He leads by example and patiently and sincerely explains a medical situation,’ ” Verville said. “So, thank you Dr. Whang for all your incredible service and partnership, not just to your patients, but to the community members, the volunteers and the staff.”
In accepting his award, Whang thanked the volunteers for their daily “acts of kindness” and said, “I’ve had such a privilege in the Palliative Care department and beyond to work with such amazing volunteers. It can stem from the melodious songs of Bob in our services of remembrance as he sings to the families who have had recent losses, to walking into a patient room and seeing Alice holding the hand of a patient, sharing a smile or sharing a story.”
He added that these “small and sometimes very large acts of kindness can go infinitely far.”
Maynard noted in her introduction of Bassett that the Edith Amsden Award is given to individuals who show a remarkable dedication to service that Amsden herself embodied during her 45 years as a hospital volunteer.
“The recipient sets a high standard of volunteerism with loyalty and dedication, which inspires other volunteers,” Maynard said. “The award recognizes a commitment of time and an extraordinary desire and ability to improve the quality of life for those in need through compassion and caring when working with patients, staff and visitors. This year’s winner hits each one of those benchmarks many times over.”
Bassett has served for more than 20 years as a patient and family adviser in the Patient and Family Voices volunteer program in the hospital’s Office of Patient and Family Centered Care. She has logged 4,919 hours of service to date and has served on hundreds of projects.
“I cannot tell you how much my volunteer hours have added to my life,” Bassett said. “The meetings with patients and their families and the nurses that I have worked with have just enriched my life enormously. … And when I leave a room and a patient says, ‘Thank you for asking me those questions. Thank you for caring,’ it means everything in the world. Thank you all.”