Mullingar First Responders launch drive for new members

Nearly every day last year, the Mullingar Community First Responders (CFR) received call-outs to medical emergencies.

Some days they dealt with more than one-call out, and they generally arrived within three to seven minutes of the call being placed.

The statistics show that the team of 15 responded to 355 emergencies during 2023, which is why, says group coordinator David Stafford, they are now looking to recruit around 10 new volunteers.

“We’ve been pretty busy,” David says, explaining that while initially, the members trained to deal with cardiac emergencies, in the last year they upgraded to ‘first aid responder’ level.

“So around Christmas and some of the busier periods, we’ve been answering more calls than we would normally, because we now cover slips and falls and haemorrhage control, so we are assisting the ambulance service more than we would have been, and we’re hoping to continue to do that now.”

Over the last year, chest pain has been the biggest cause behind call-outs, accounting for 57.7 per cent of cases, followed by strokes (22 per cent) cardiac arrests or respiratory arrests (11.3 per cent), then falls (9.6 per cent) and choking (0.6 per cent).

“There’s a process in place at the moment where we could be staying at first aid responder level rather than at cardiac responder level, which we’ve been at so far.”

The Community First Responders is one of a network of around 270 groups operating around the country.

“We’re a volunteer group that come together and we train twice a fortnight in the army barracks,” says David, adding that they pushed themselves even further with their training last year to get everyone to first aid responder level, which included instruction on how to deal with things such as sprains and strains and fall injuries.

When a 999 or 112 call comes in, the system generates a text request to the CFR as well as to the ambulance services. The CFR is split into two groups, constituted in such a way as to maximise the geographical spread, in a bid to ensure responses can be achieved as rapidly as possible.

“We send two people to a conscious patient, so for stroke, chest pain, choking or anything like that, two people would go, but if it’s a cardiac arrest and it’s a life-threatening emergency, we’d send four people.

“As soon as they arrive, they would assess the situation and then we can update the ambulance service. So even though we are dispatched, it doesn’t delay the ambulance service. They dispatch an ambulance: we are eyes and ears basically until the ambulance comes.

“We can administer medication for chest pain – we can administer aspirin. We do FAST assessments then for strokes, and we update the ambulance teams on what the position is, and where there are fractures or sprains, we can administer first aid until the ambulance gets there.”

Because of that drive to get to emergencies as quickly as possible, David says that ideally, any new volunteers would have transport and would live no further than 10k from the Market Square – which is also the distance within which the service operates.

There are no age restrictions and volunteers don’t need to have a medical background as they will be trained. “Once they are physically able to provide CPR and attend the training, we’d be willing to take them on,” says David.

All volunteers are also garda-vetted before becoming part of the team.

Two other dimensions to the CFR’s range of activities are the provision of public access defibrillators around town and the provision of free CPR training.

To date, the CFR has installed 13 defibrillators around Mullingar and it is preparing to install two more soon – one at Penneys and one in the Patrick Street area.

“Any donations we receive go back into defibrillators and into training material for the free courses.”

Mullingar Community First Responders are on Facebook, and anyone interested in becoming involved is asked to contact the group via email – mullingarcfr@gmail.com.