https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.130.6

Dariel Burdass
Chief Executive, The Physiological Society

Volunteering has been very much in my thoughts with the ‘Festival of volunteering’, which took place on Monday 8 May 2023, highlighting the positive impact volunteering has on communities across the nation, through to Volunteers Week, an annual event, which takes place during the week of 1-7 June every year.

As I reflect on the benefits, in terms of skills, knowledge and experience I have gained from my various volunteer roles across the STEM sector as well as the friendships made, I would like to take this opportunity to recognise the fantastic contribution volunteers make to our Society and say a big thank you.

Our diverse, dedicated, and enthusiastic volunteers are one of our greatest assets. They are a vital part of the work we do, from assisting us in the development and advocacy of our activities and programmes to raising the visibility of physiology, physiologists, and The Society. Our community remains strong and vibrant due to the level of engagement and commitment from our members. If you have not volunteered for The Society before, please don’t be shy; there are lots of ways you can get involved even if you only have a small amount of available time.

Have you thought about micro volunteering? Micro volunteering is volunteering for short tasks that may make up a larger project. This type of volunteering offers the opportunity to undertake bite-size activities, many of which can be online. If you have more time to spare there are opportunities to help with a oneoff event or provide long-term support to a Society project.

Volunteer opportunities include

Whether it is through our governance roles, engagement or advocacy work, the Society provides many opportunities to enable you to get involved with your community, which is a fantastic way to gain new skills, or use existing ones, and to build your network. Examples include:

• Amplifying our reach through social media advocacy – our current campaign is #physiologychangestheworld
• Twitter – Follow us, re-tweet us or tell us what you’re up to
• Instagram – Like us and share our posts
• Facebook – Like us and share our posts
• LinkedIn – Share our posts and write your own on our group page
• Serving on our committees and working groups that help deliver our activities
• Organising a two-day scientific meeting to bring your community together
• Representing your institution and supporting the membership by becoming a Society Representative
• Reviewing our grant applications
• Contributing evidence and insights to support the development of our policy work in key areas that are important to members and to physiology as a discipline.
• Sharing your research through our various communication channels including Physiology News, Let’s Get Physiological podcast, and the blog
• Becoming a peer reviewer for The Society’s journals. Join a dedicated team that is assessing the validity, quality and often the originality of articles for publication to maintain the integrity of science in the journal by filtering out invalid or poor quality articles.

Benefits of volunteering

Research has demonstrated that volunteerism and community involvement offer benefits both to communities and to volunteers themselves.¹ When you are giving up your time, skills, and services to help both The Society and our community then it is important that you get something back both personally and professionally. Every volunteer gets something different from their volunteering experience, including the opportunity to:

• develop new skills in new areas
• improve mental and physical health and wellbeing
• work on projects you ordinarily wouldn’t have the chance to
• build new connections and networks
• increase your employability
• support career progression
• give back to your community
• have fun

What our volunteers say

Most of our volunteers have specific reasons for what they do. We share a few below:

Professor Áine Kelly, Trinity College Dublin

“Being a Society Trustee is one of the most meaningful activities I engage in as a physiologist. In particular, working with colleagues on the policy group has emphasised to me the importance of directly engaging with the policymakers whose decisions shape all our lives. Through The Society’s work, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in activities in both the UK and Irish parliaments where we highlight the importance of physiology as a discovery science and how physiology knowledge is fundamental to preserving and improving the health of the human population and the planet as a whole, now and in the future.”

Dr Richard Siow, King’s College London

“During my time as a member of The Physiological Society I have co-chaired a project looking at quantifying the value of knowledge exchange associated with physiological research in the UK, a further project looking at the value of physiological guardrails for the introduction of AI into healthcare settings, as well as provided numerous case studies supporting The Society’s policy work promoting healthy ageing.

As important as this impact is, the value of these reports goes beyond meeting with and informing policymakers about the contribution of UK science. They have also helped me to build and establish new links with academic colleagues, funders, industry and civil servants to broaden the impact of my research.

Policy work has also given me the opportunity to share my experience and advice with early career researchers and stress the value of research impact beyond the traditional publishing model.’

Dr Catherine Kirby, University of Huddersfield

“I promote the undergraduate Physiological Society membership to students in Biological Sciences at the University of Huddersfield. We do not have a named physiology degree course, but it is a subject that is central to all the students in years 1 and 2. Some students really enjoy the challenge of physiology and wish to continue to study physiology at the post-graduate level, so membership of The Society provides them with the opportunity to explore careers in physiology.

The Society has been very generous in funding outreach activities with local high schools. We have invited GCSE pupils to carry out physiology investigations that support the Biology GCSE syllabus but cannot run at school, e.g. cardiac physiology. We have also run outreach activities that look beyond the GCSE syllabus to encourage them to be inspired by physiology. We run fun and engaging activities in the local primary school to promote ‘Physiology Friday’.

I value the support of the Physiological Society as I feel it makes my interests more substantial when the students can see that there is a wider community outside their chosen university degree course that has an interest in physiology.”

If you would like to find out about the current opportunities and how to become a more active member, please get in touch with our Membership Engagement Manager Jen Happe jhappe@physoc.org

The Society is a membership organisation. As always, please call me, email me, invite me to come to your lab, and let me know what we do well, where we could do better, what we might stop doing and what we could do more of.

See you at Harrogate for Physiology 2023!

Footnotes

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301217915_Understanding_and_encouraging_volunteerism_and_community_involvement.