Congratulations to Mr. John Fields and Mrs Patricia Creighton who completed their First Responders Training and will be responding to NI ambulance service calls in the coming weeks. Our new First Time Responders received their training though a four-week course and confidently passed. Their going active with the CFR programme comes shortly after the actions of the Community First Responders are being credited with assisting in the saving two lives in the city. Two men were successfully resuscitated and maintained by CRF volunteers, not the local volunteers but others who responded to the emergencies. Indeed, in one of the emergencies the CFR volunteer accompanied the patient in the ambulance assisting in the speedy delivery of the patient to Craigavon Area Hospital. These incidents happen at Callanbridge and on the Moy Road.
The West Armagh Consortium and REACT came together in the promotion of this life saving project. And we would like to take this opportunity to extend our congratulations to John Fields and Patricia Creighton. We hope that they will be the first of many community volunteers to take up the challenge of the first responding. The four-week training course has been described by the two CRF volunteers as very comprehensive and rewarding. They added that the training programme will also afford them further opportunities to advance their emergency medical responding skills.
We would like to take this opportunity to once again promote this fantastic project and encourage more people to uptake and avail of the training. ‘Such a programme can sometimes be under appreciated insofar that not all emergencies become newsworthy for the very fact that assistance had been readily available and had averted what could perhaps have been a more serious incident. As a result of our initial promotion we identified several people willing to put their names forward we hope that these volunteers will be able to follow through and in turn encourage even more like-minded people.
There are a number of avenues that potential volunteers can go down to register with the Community First Responders. They can contact either WAC or REACT and we will forward their details on or go directly to the CFR website https://www.cfrat.org.