King's Ambulance Medal for Guernsey's boss

Friday 14 June 2024

What started out as a hobby, and led him into a 30-year career, has now resulted in Mark Mapp being honoured by the King.

The Chief Officer of Guernsey's Ambulance Service has been awarded the King's Ambulance Medal.

Bestowed through the national Honours System, the King's Ambulance Medal is a relatively new award, launched in 2011 as the Queen's Ambulance Medal.

It is granted in recognition of good conduct and exemplary service by individuals who have worked for the ambulance services across the British Isles for more than ten years. 

Mr Mapp is believed to be the third person awarded the KAM in the Channel Islands - following his predecessor as Chief Ambulance Officer, Jon Beausire, and their Jersey equivalent, Jason Hamon. 

With 30-years of dedicated service across to our island's health service through both the voluntary and professional ambulance operation, as well as a stint working for HSC, it's clear to see why Mr Mapp has been awarded his King's Ambulance Medal.

He was clear to say that his achievements are all down to team work though.

Pictured: The Queen's Ambulance Medal was launched in 2011, to recognise the impact of key individuals within the ambulance services across the British Isles. It is now known as the King's Ambulance Medal.

"I've probably got a lot of people to thank," he said. "There's so many."

"I'd like to thank anyone that supported me, my family, my colleagues, or my friends throughout the last 30 years. Because they've also contributed to the person I am professionally and personally, and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be where I am today, so I've got to thank all those people."

Mr Mapp's career could have taken a very different path though, if he hadn't said yes to an invitation from a friend of his, more than three decades ago. 

"A friend invited me along to cadets when I was 15, so I went along once and then just kept going. It was a hobby really," he said.

"I really wanted to join the emergency ambulance service but back then you had to be 21 so I went to Plymouth and studied engineering and I came back and joined the patient transfer service, which I really enjoyed. I've loved every role I've worked in. I've been out on the lifeboat, and I've been hanging off a cliff, and I have saved lives but that's not all of it. It's working with the team here, and at Health, and the other blue light services, and JESCC. Everything I've achieved has been down to all of them, and the people I've worked with. It's not really about me, it's about the team."

Mr Mapp told Express that he is very proud of the entire ambulance service and crew, and what they collectively and individual achieve through the emergency, statutory, and voluntary sectors they cover. 

Guernsey's ambulance service is a rarity in the way it is run, and funded, with Mr Mapp saying that only increases how interesting his job is, with a variety of different duties under his remit.

Pictured: Mark Mapp at the ambulance station on the Rohais this week.

"St John apparently is one of the top trusted brands in the UK," he said. "And the fact (Guernsey's) emergency ambulance service, and the statutory ambulance services are run by St John, that is really unusual. There's only four other places in the entire world where St John runs the statutory ambulance service on behalf of the government. We're the only one in the British Isles, and the other ones are in New Zealand, Western Australia, and Papua New Guinea, so it's really, really rare.

"But the point is we are the only one in the whole of the British Isles that the government don't run. We do it on their behalf. We're commissioned so we've got one foot in the St John camp and one in the professional ambulance service camp. I think that makes the job even more interesting."

While Mr Mapp is employed through the ambulance service he continues to volunteer at events and for related charities.

He told Express that one aspect of his work that he is particularly proud of involves the Cardiac Action Group, of which he was Chair.

"They've done so many fantastic things for the health service but we got to a juncture when I was Chair of 'what do we do next?' And one of the schemes was introducing the publicly accessible defibrillator programme and education training in the community.

"We started with a number of defibrillators within all the high schools, but the very first PAD site was the one at Footes Lane, which is on a massive monolithic sign and we got Fabrice Marama who was an Arsenal football player who had a cardiac arrest to open it."

Pictured: St John ambulance crew members teaching life saving skills through a partnership with the Cardiac Action Group.

"That work has continued and that charity, and Gerry Le Roy and Mike Froome, they've just taken it another step where they've carried on the mission, and now we've got about 150 publicly accessible defibrillators, and Mike Froome has taught about 10% of our island's population resuscitation, and I know that has saved lives without a doubt, and so I've been involved in that, and I have a real passion for survival from sudden cardiac arrest, and that led me into becoming a resuscitation UK council instructor which essentially means I teach across locally, the UK, and even Europe.

"I've been teaching the medical emergency response teams within hospitals to respond to critically ill patients and I've done that for probably about 20 years as an instructor.

"And so all of this, I've thoroughly enjoyed as part of my career and a lot of it volunteering as well."

Mr Mapp said this work, to increase survival from cardiac arrests, is what makes him most proud. 

"When I qualified as a paramedic, I realised, actually, I couldn't always be on duty, and I couldn't always be at the right place at the right time to save someone's life. So how can I save more lives? Then I realised, actually the way I can do that was teach everyone else my skills and actually put all these defibrillator sites out.

"That essentially means I can save more lives through teamwork again.

"It's all about the teams that have made this happen, and that's what led me to do it. So it's an extension of my knowledge and skills through team and charity work, which has meant more lives have been saved."

Pictured: Guernsey now has 150 publicly accessible defibrillators - partly down to the work of Mark Mapp.

Mr Mapp first found out he had been nominated for his Kings' Ambulance Medal when he received a call from the UK's Honours office notifying him - but the details were shrouded in mystery. 

He was told the award also wasn't guaranteed - so he was left in limbo until he received a further cryptic telephone call, this time from Guernsey's Government House. 

While he found out he had received the award - he wasn't allowed to tell anyone until after the official announcement on Friday night. And, he doesn't know who nominated him. 

"They told me I had been nominated, but I wasn't guaranteed to receive it," he explained. "I asked who had nominated me and they said they couldn't tell me. It adds to the cryptic nature of it.

"I had to just put it to the back of my mind because I didn't know if I was going to get it or not, and I didn't know anything else about it. So I just thought well it's nice to be nominated anyway. I can't thank whoever nominated me because I don't know who they are. It's nice they think I deserve it."