©InfoYoung first aider Hannah Niesser had plenty on her mind as she waited for a bus to go to her GCSE English exam. But when a man beside her suddenly collapsed, all thoughts of Shakespeare flew out of her mind.
Other passers-by laid the casualty on the floor, but then didn’t know what to do. As Hannah recalled: “I realised I’d basically have to save someone’s life, which was a bit of a shock early on a Wednesday morning.”
She continued: “At first I was panicking, but then I remembered my training. The man wasn’t breathing and had turned blue, so I started giving chest compressions and slowly he began to respond. By the time the paramedics arrived ten minutes later, he was breathing again.”
Crucial training
Just at that moment, Hannah’s bus arrived. With her patient in safe hands, she hopped on board and headed off to her exam.
The volunteer, from Gwynedd in North Wales, had trained as an event first aider just months earlier but understandably didn’t expect her training to prove so crucial so soon.
Janice Kinsella, event first aid coordinator, said: “She’s one of our very young volunteers and it’s great that her training stood her in such good stead when this man really needed it. Hannah's attended lots of first aid duties over the last few months and shown her steel at those too. She’s a complete all-rounder and we're just so proud of her."
And the story has a silver lining. When her results came through on 25 August, Hannah – unfazed by the morning’s drama – had passed her English exam with flying colours.
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