DR TOM Donald and university student Emily Dubois have been welcomed to the Knutsford Heartstart team after completing their training.

Dr Donald has become the third Heartstart instructor to complete his training in the past year, with the first two, Stephanie Griffith and Rebecca Nelson, already running community Heartstart courses.

Dr Donald qualified as a doctor two years ago, and has just completed six months working at the Royal Bolton Hospital in its accident and emergency department.

“Despite this tremendous workload Tom has made time to be trained firstly as a facilitator and now as a fully-fledged Heartstart instructor,” said Adrian Rees, chairman of Knutsford Community First Responder Trust.

“Emily Dubois joined the trust as a Heartstart volunteer last September and, although now in her final year at Sheffield University has shown great dedication to return monthly to Knutsford to continue her training.

“She is now a fully-fledged Heartstart training facilitator, and joins our Knutsford team of volunteers providing the hands-on training which is an integral part of our BHF Heartstart course.”

Adrian said the demand from Knutsford residents for the trust’s life-saving courses continued to grow.

“Last year almost 300 attended the free course, compared with 97 in 2013,” he said.

“Following our Heartstart course last Thursday evening the year to date total of people trained in 2015 had already reached 96, with the May course already nearly fully booked.

“To ensure we are able to continue to meet the increasing requests from the Knutsford community to be taught the British Heart Foundation course we must continue to strengthen and expand our dedicated team of volunteers.”

To book a place on the free Heartstart course run monthly by Knutsford Community First Responders Trust book online at www.heartstartknutsford.co.uk or ring 01565 631324.