We are only a few minutes into the shift when the patient turns to me and says “they’re the unsung heroes, you know…”
The hospital porters are “all happy and chatty and engage with you” he says. “You can’t fault them.”
He is being pushed by one of these very porters, who has just started his shift and looks suitably pleased with the compliment.
“Thank you sir…” he says, as we accompany the patient to his destination.
It is indeed very hard to find anyone less cheerful than the porter I am shadowing today.
An irrepressibly positive person with a truly infectious smile, he is welcomed wherever he goes with wide grins and as cheerful a response as the greetings he is giving out.
He has been here more than 20 years and does seem to know everybody.
“I am blessed because I like exercise and I like working,” he says. “Every day is different. Time goes quickly and your mind is always occupied.”
Today, there is a steady stream of patients who need moving, slowly and carefully, from their beds to other parts of the hospital where tests and other procedures await them. This is the ‘bread and butter’ work of a porter, 365 days a year, 24 hours of the day.
But they also do much more. Apart from moving patients, the 25 porters based at Royal Brompton are also responsible for collecting and moving specimens like blood samples, gas cylinders, waste bins, and beds – which may or may not contain a patient.
They also have to clean up “infectious” waste that cleaners are not trained to handle. And they are on call to help in emergencies as general ‘runners’ if something is needed urgently. Their manager says “If someone says ‘it’s not my job’ then it is usually down to them – everything is their job,” she says.
A diverse team, the porters come from all over the world – as they always have done. In 1972, a team of Brompton porters from the Caribbean, Europe and North America won a local football tournament – the Fulham League Cup – and went on to undertake a tour of the Far East as the Brompton Amateur Football Club.
No wonder my porter says every day is different. “There is always something.” He says he stops counting when his steps per day gets to 10,000. “And I am a shift porter so sometimes I cover reception too.”
As you might imagine with his personality, this is a job he enjoys a lot. “Our job is to welcome them the minute they come through the door.”
In the nature of this specialist hospital dealing with complex, often lifelong heart and lung conditions, many of the patients have been coming here their whole lives.
“I will stop everything to talk to them because I see them every day. They have grown up in this hospital – we have known them as children.”
It is this engagement with the patient, which is so appreciated by them and so enjoyed by this porter, that is perhaps the most impactful aspect of their day to day work – that is, when they are not literally helping colleagues to save a life in an emergency.
“I always ask them what is your advice about life?” he says. “You want them not to worry. You want to take them away from thinking about what is happening. You want to make them feel they are at home again.”
He understands that there is something more than just small talk going on here. Those in hospital have many, many things on their mind, and sometimes those thoughts can be terrifying, overwhelming.
This is not just about the physical load borne by both porter and patient – it is about the mental load too.
“You don’t know what is going on in their lives. They may feel they are not in control, but when you ask them for their advice about what life means to them, there is a shift in power.”
I have to ask him therefore in all his 20 years of portering here, what he has learned about life, after listening to literally hundreds of people, of all ages, at all the different stages in their lives – some at the start, some at the very end.
“Don’t worry so much about what is in the future – you have to appreciate what is happening now,” he says.
Clearly a religious man, it is this principle that has guided him through his own challenges in life, and which is in its own way is just as moving. His positive outlook is extraordinary. Even the long night shifts in the depths of winter have their advantages. “You always a get a seat on the tube,” he says.
So is there anything at all he dislikes, I ask, determined to find something even just a little bit less positive about his work as a hospital porter.
He answers: “I’ve never been anywhere before this country where you have to wait six months for the sun.”