Alongside our frontline colleagues working over the festive period, our volunteers will also be out on the road supporting them and patients in their local communities. Our volunteers come from all walks of life, and alongside volunteering for EMAS, have very interesting careers, backgrounds and stories.
One of those volunteers is Ann Cooreman, a Community First Responder (CFR) with the Vale and Fosseway CFR scheme, who was inspired to become a CFR after working in Biotechnology.
Ann came to the UK in 1991, moving to England in 2018 after living across the world in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland.
“I have a PhD in linguistics and I was initially an academic which involved lecturing and research. I left academics in 1996 and after working for a computer company for four years I changed directions again and took a job with a small Biotechnology company in Glasgow. My job was to source human samples (both diseased and ‘normal’) for research in the company’s labs.
“This led me eventually to set up my own company, Tissue Solutions, in Glasgow specialising in the provision of ethically sourced human samples (i.e. with patients' consent) from suppliers worldwide (hospitals and biobanks) to companies worldwide (pharmaceutical and biotech companies) for basic research. The human samples included anything from bloods to tissues from cancer surgeries, post-mortem brain samples from people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Lewy Body disease, etc. to help research groups working on developing new drugs. One of the Bio Banks we worked with was the Nottingham Biobank based at Queen’s and City Hospital.
“As an academic I felt removed from the real world and my work obtaining the basic materials for drug research made me feel in a small way that I was contributing to people’s health indirectly.
“Despite my background in languages, I have always had an interest in science and medicine. Volunteering as a Community First Responder now that I am retired has allowed me to combine this interest with helping people where I can and giving back to the community.”
We’d like to thank all our staff and volunteers working this time of year for their incredible efforts in responding to people’s medical emergencies