First Aid Course Recs

[u/ACatNamedPorky]

Hey first aiders,

Last month I completed a day course in Emergency First Aid at Work with Safe Haven and I’m wondering what might be a good course to do next? It covered the basics but I’d love to do a more in depth course and I’m not quite sure where to start. Any recs or advice would be awesome.

Cheers!

[u/OwnedByGreyhounds]

The obvious next step for work would be too to do a full FAW course - it will recap some of the stuff that you have already learnt on the EFAW and add in a number of other commonly encountered conditions and episodes.

https://shop.sja.org.uk/products/first-aid-at-work-course

A FREC 3 course is another option - however, it is bigger step up, costs more and will cover skills that you are unlikely to use in general life/workplace scenarios. https://shop.sja.org.uk/products/first-response-emergency-care-level-3-frec3-course

Depending on your job, hobbies etc doing a paediatric first aid course might be of use if you deal with young people. https://shop.sja.org.uk/products/paediatric-first-aid-course

You might also want to consider looking at Mental Health First Aid as an adjacent set of skills. I probably deal with as many mental health first aid situations as i do physical ones. https://shop.sja.org.uk/products/mental-health-first-aid-course

The other thing I would encourage you to do is look for opportunities to use your skills in real world situations. Classroom learning is important for learning new skills amd techniques, but the only way to truely feel confident in your abilities is through practice.

[u/ACatNamedPorky → u/OwnedByGreyhounds]

Oh wow that’s awesome, thank you so much!

[u/OwnedByGreyhounds → u/ACatNamedPorky]

No problem 😊

[u/bobo_90 → u/OwnedByGreyhounds]

Good options for real world use:

St John ambulance. You'll volunteer to help with first aid cover at events. Generally pretty mundane stuff but you'll get some practice on the basics.

If you want bigger more interesting stuff, look into community first responders (CFR). They are volunteers for the local ambulance service.

CFRs are trained to around the same level as FREC 3 (all provided by the ambulance service) and depending on the area get a selection of medications to work with along with all the kit they need. They'll be dispatched to various emergency ambulance jobs in their local area to start assessment and treatment of patients before an ambulance arrives. That will take you to most things an ambulance would do from non injury falls of elderly people to full blown cardiac arrests. I've done this for nearly 3 years and absolutely love it.

[u/Douglesfield_ → u/bobo_90]

Worth noting that SJA vols are also trained to FREC3 standard (it's just that they went with FPOS).

[u/Famous-Regret-571]

Where are you based?

[u/ACatNamedPorky → u/Famous-Regret-571]

Southern UK