We’re pleased to share Janine’s experience, thanks to her volunteer training with Darnall Well Being.
Janine volunteers at our Dementia Cafes and, along with a number of our team and volunteers, she took part in the two-day Emergency First Aid training in 2023. This summer, she found herself putting what she’d learned into practice, and got in touch to tell us about what happened.
Janine was in her garden when she heard one of her neighbours shouting, asking her to ring an ambulance. He told her that his partner, Sarah*, was on the floor, unconscious. In answering the questions that she was asked by the 999 operator, Janine went round to the house to see if Sarah was breathing, as her husband was upset, saying he didn’t know. Luckily, the front door was open. When Janine went in, she found Sarah on her knees. Her feet were gray, and so was her face. The call operator told Janine to get Sarah onto the floor, which she did. Every now and again, Sarah was gasping for breath, but her chest wasn’t going up and down. The call operator asked Janine to start CPR, and as they told her what to do, she found that she felt confident, because she’d learned and practised CPR on the course.
Janine says “Normally, I’m not a confident person. So I think I would have really panicked. But I think because I actually did it on the course and I saw what I’m supposed to be doing, I was confident. If the emergency services had just been telling me what to do on the phone, I would have been thinking, ‘Oh no, am I doing it right? What if I’m doing it wrong?’ But because I’d been on the course, it was different. It all just came back to me once I started – I was thinking ‘I’ve done this training, I can do this.’”
Janine thinks she was doing the CPR for about 10 minutes, after which the paramedics arrived and took over. Her neighbour was taken to hospital and after treatment, should be back at home again soon. As Janine says, “She’s got a second chance.” Janine feels that the training is so important that she’s now encouraging family and friends to do it, too, telling them “You need to get on this course.”
In September, Janine was chosen for an award at Voluntary Action Sheffield’s Community Champions celebration event, where she won the Inspirational Volunteer Award. This was for both performing the CPR and for encouraging others to learn to do CPR, too.
We’d like to thank Sofeena Aslam at SOAR for running the training for us last year, and say a huge well done to Janine for putting what she’d learned into action and saving her neighbour’s life!
*names have been changed