Denman’s international business manager ready to save lives

Martyn Wady, Denman's international business manager, is proud to announce that he is officially trained as a First Responder! Martyn spends much of his time in his home office in rural Bedfordshire, and although working from home has its benefits, Martyn was looking for an extra challenge. So, he began training to become one of Britain’s First Responders. Martyn says: “I live in a rural village and even at the best of times it’s a challenge to get an ambulance here in under eight minutes. In recent times with the pressure on the NHS, it’s even harder. The chances of surviving a cardiac arrest after four minutes reduce massively with every passing minute, so the sooner you can start CPR the better. I’m trained to use oxygen and a defibrillator too and I can get pretty much anywhere in my local area faster than an ambulance.” Martyn undertook five full days of training, 25 hours of online learning and commits to further monthly training. He is ‘on-call’ weekly and attends Category 1 and 2 emergencies (life in danger and possible life in danger) which can include anything from an elderly person taking a tumble to heart attacks. “Our role is to provide First Aid where needed and assess and monitor patients until the ambulance arrives. Often, we carry out the primary assessments and vital statistics which enables the ambulance crew to act fast and provide the necessary treatment when they do arrive. We are often first on the scene and with long ambulance wait times, we can be looking after a patient for hours, so a lot of what we do is monitoring and reassurance,” explains Martyn Wady. When on-call Martyn must be ready to drop everything and go and ensure he has his kit prepped at all times. While the idea of being called to an emergency can be scary, Martyn admits that when it happens his training kicks in and he just follows the procedure. Martyn concludes “It’s scary, but you just have to remember your training and the fact that in pretty much every case you can’t make it worse. What you can do is buy the patient crucial time that might just save their life.” Denman's international business manager by day, First Responder by…well, all day and night! As we stand at the tail-end of a tough couple of years, Martyn is putting his best foot forward to give back to his community. HJ wishes you the best with this new challenge! Fill yourself in on other Denman-related news from the last couple of months here!