MEDICAL: Ambulance hero Mark wins top award

Mark Evans who is the North West Ambulance Service Community Resuscitation Manager for Cumbria and Lancashire, was honoured for outstanding patient care at The British Heart Foundation Achievement Awards.

Mark, who is from the Ribble Valley, was one of only nine healthcare professionals and teams to receive an award at the ceremony, hosted at Birmingham’s Hilton Metropole Hotel. The leadership award was presented to Mark for evidence of his outstanding clinical practice and solution-focused care.

The national British Heart Foundation awards aim to honour staff across the UK, who are funded or supported by the BHF, and have shown excellence in healthcare.

Mark is a manager within NWAS’ Community Resuscitation Team (CRT), at the heart of local communities across the region to install defibrillators and teach basic life support training to organisations and members of the public. Mark was a frontline ambulanceman for nine years before moving into the CRT in 2009 as a Community Resuscitation Development officer, and became area Community Resuscitation Manager for Cumbria and Lancashire in 2011.

To date the region’s Community Resuscitation Team has helped to install over 100 defibrillators, train nearly 10,000 individuals in life-saving care, and train and manage 1100 volunteer Community First Responders in Cumbria and Lancashire alone.