Manchester Arena bomb survivor Yasmin Reevell starts NHS job

Yasmin Reevell was just a teenager when she was caught up in the attack after an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017 that resulted in 22 people being killed and hundreds more injured.

The victims included York couple Angelika and Marcin Klis who were killed while waiting for their daughters in the arena foyer when the bomb went off.

• 'York couple died in each other's arms' - Manchester Arena inquiry hears

Yasmin, 24, from Sutton upon Derwent, stills suffers from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the tragedy.

It happened two weeks before her 18th birthday as she was coming to the end of two years studying Level 3 Music courses at York College.

She subsequently left the region to study music at university but, having struggled to settle as her PTSD intensified, Yasmin decided to drop out.  

Police at Manchester Arena at the end of the concert by Ariana Grande (Image: PA Wire/PA Images)

In 2020, she returned to higher education in more familiar surroundings at York College and opted to pursue a BA (Hons) in Media Make-up, Special Effects and Hair Design.

Having battled such strong personal challenges to resume her studies, York College said Yasmin demonstrated "tremendous courage" to choose PTSD as the theme for her major project on the course. 

Despite the concerns of her tutors that emotions from the past could be triggered, Yasmin was set on sharing her story to help others who might be suffering from the disorder and highlight the importance of understanding the long-lasting effects of PTSD.

“I did wonder if it was the right thing to be doing,” Yasmin admits. “But, in the grand scheme of things, I knew I’d been through enough to know how to deal with it. It was helping me and other people by shining a light on it.”

Now, she has started a new job with medical simulation specialists Simbodies using skills acquired during her degree.

The Thirsk-based company also works with the military services to replicate combat settings, ensuring that medical students experience a highly immersive training environment and learn high-risk procedures in a low-risk secure situation.

Yasmin’s job sees her design and produce bodies and body parts for simulated patients needing urgent medical attention – a specialism that has seen four of her fellow York College University Centre course graduates employed in the same role.

Yasmin’s job sees her design and produce bodies and body parts for simulated patients needing urgent medical attention (Image: York College)

The career move is not one Yasmin might have anticipated but, having gone through such a terrifying ordeal, she says she has a genuine awareness of her job’s importance.

“Without the prosthetics and silicone dummies that we give to the military and NHS, they wouldn’t know what to do when things like the Manchester attack happen,” she said. “I’ve been doing the job for just over a month now and everything happens for a reason.”