Arran volunteer wins top prize
An Arran volunteer responder has won a national award.
Fiona Laing of Pirnmill was presented with the Newton Award for services to cardiac arrest response in Scotland at the Scottish Cardiac Arrest Symposium last month.
The award attracted a number of nominations for individuals and teams who respond to, and enhance the management of, out-of-hospital cardiac treatments.
In addition to her community first response activities, Fiona is a volunteer firefighter at Lochranza and Coastguard at Lamlash.
Nominated
Fiona was nominated by GP Dr David Hogg. In his nomination, he said: ‘Fiona typifies community-minded awesomeness. She has single-handedly maintained a team of 24/7 community first responder cover for 13 years to the Lochranza and Catacol communities.
‘She gives her time without question to lots of community CPR train- ing events from Cubs to Brownies, to older people and working with multiple professional groups.
‘She has instigated the roll out of more than 20 community access defibrillators across Arran and in the process has stimulated communities not only to raise the funds but consider their own CPR awareness.
‘Fiona does not seek recognition but readily deserves it. She typifies the sort of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) championing that is required to reach the more rural parts of Scotland – and all with a sense of fun, cheer and selfless dedication, and is passionate about doing whatever she can to improve OHCA survival in her community.’
Dedicated
Dr Hogg told the Banner: ‘I am delighted Fiona has won this award. I understand there was steep competition. It’s great Fiona’s community-minded efforts and dedicated work can be recognised this way.’
The main venue for the symposium was Pollock Halls in Edinburgh, where video-links had been set up from Aberdeen and Cambuslang where Fiona received her award at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Training Centre.
The Newton Award was created after 43-year-old Gregor Newton suffered a cardiac arrest at his home two years ago and survived thanks to his wife who performed CPR and community first responders who delivered defibrillation.