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A new Chief Executive Officer has been appointed for both the charitable and commercial service branches of St John Ambulance Guernsey.
Registered Nurse and Certified Paediatric Nurse Practitioner Heather Langlois has been appointed to the position following her role leading the St John Guernsey training services.
Ms Langlois was keen to take up the role and work with volunteers.
“I am delighted to step up and take overall responsibility for a greater range of St John Guernsey services, including education and training, all volunteer-led services and retail healthcare services,” she said.
Pictured: St John Guernsey CEO Heather Langlois.
“I am also passionate about our youth services, spanning from five to 17-year-olds, which have inspired many young islanders to pursue careers as paramedics, ambulance technicians, doctors or healthcare professionals in the Bailiwick and further afield," said Ms Langlois.
She recognised the important role of volunteer service providers.
“The Flying Christine Marine Ambulance is crewed entirely by amazingly dedicated volunteers who are on call 24/7,” she said.
“I also salute our life-saving Community First Responders who are volunteers financed by charitable donations and may be first on the scene in some emergencies after being deployed by the Joint Emergency Control Centre.
“We have some outstanding competent and caring frontline personnel and it is a privilege for me to take on this leadership role and further develop our services.”
Pictured: Flying Christine Marine Ambulance volunteers. (Credit: Chris George)
St John Chief Ambulance Officer Mark Mapp welcomed Ms Langlois’ appointment.
“I am very pleased to be working in partnership with Heather and her teams. We work very closely with the charity volunteers who have provided great support throughout the covid pandemic,” he said.
“The deep-cleaning efforts by the volunteers have helped keep the service level of our frontline ambulance teams higher than the UK ambulance service, which we use as our benchmark.
“As a result, the States have not had to incur the high back-up costs seen in parts of the UK, which included the use of the armed services.”
Pictured: St John Chief Ambulance Officer Mark Mapp.
The St John ambulance service is delivered on behalf of the States of Guernsey and is partially funded through a grant from the Committee for Health & Social Care.
The grant is a contribution towards the operating costs of the service, the remaining costs are met through initiatives like the ambulance service subscription scheme.
St John Chairman John Hollis said the services will face challenges.
“The coming post-pandemic years will be an interesting time for the St John service as Guernsey seeks to 'build back healthier' in an era of aging demographics and strained Government finances,” he said.
“The two teams under the leadership of Mark and Heather respectively are growing their services capabilities in line with our overall 'caring for life' ethos.”
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