First Responders

NARS Community First Responders (CFR’s) are volunteers, who are trained to have the knowledge and skills to enable them to attend life-threatening medical emergencies.

NARS CFR’s support the East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST), covering locations in Norfolk. During each shift the NARS CFR responder car, kindly donated by Potters Resort, is manned by the NARS CFR Teams. They are logged ‘on duty’ by the EEAST Emergency Operations Centre, (EOC, where your 999 calls are received). The EOC Team ask them to ‘stand by’ at a location where there is little or no ambulance cover.

When a 999 emergency call is received, the call is prioritised to establish if it is suitable to send a CFR. If so, the nearest available CFR is notified and asked to attend the call and an ambulance is mobilised at the same time.

The teams are tasked to life threatening calls: cardiac arrest is the ultimate medical emergency, so every second counts. We can respond quickly in areas where there may not be ambulance cover available within 8 minutes. The importance of immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and the early use of a defibrillator cannot be underestimated - it dramatically increases the patient’s chances of survival.

Our CFR’s travel under normal road conditions without blue lights or sirens. But due to the allocation of stand-by location they can often arrive at the scene of a life-threatening emergency several minutes before the nearest ambulance.