First aid training is an extremely vital skill to obtain for you and for our community. It is an essential life skill that helps most of us remain safer by appreciating the risks and being able to help others involved in a medical emergency.
What Is First Aid
First Aid is the ability to recognize when someone needs medical treatment, then assess the speed that care needs to be provided, at its most basic core level.
It can be as simple as giving someone two Panadol tablets, a glass of water, and a cold compress when they have a headache, to something as complex as entering a life-threatening situation in which you have multiple people in need of immediate First Aid ranging from a tourniquet on a severed limb, providing CPR and controlling bleeding while watching and treating for shock on all the other victims at the site of an MVA.
Very few people have a natural aptitude for correctly rendering First Aid without undertaking formal training. There is a precise protocol and order in which a First Aider must render their assistance, and it might surprise you to learn that your first priority in the above scenario is not the person alive and bleeding out with a severed limb but the person who is not breathing.
And therein is the reason First Aid skills are so important.
Why Is First Aid So Important To Learn
There is a reason why CPR is given to the victim who is not breathing over the one bleeding out, and if you don’t know why that is, it is time to book yourself on First Aid course. Try the First Aid Quiz and test your current First Aid skills and knowledge. Then refer back to the definition above of First Aid for the underlined answer.
Once you have learned how to recognise the signs and symptoms of multiple conditions, and you have enough knowledge and common sense to look at a person and see they require some form of assistance, you are then going to apply your knowledge in a practical manner and provide assistance to someone in need of your help.
If you have never taken a First Aid course, now is the time to get yourself booked onto a course near you. With the cost of living climbing every day, and the ability to see your GP drastically reduced with lengthy wait periods, never has there been a more appropriate time to learn First Aid and become proficient with the jargon, items inside a First Aid kit, and medications used to control pain and fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, etc.
Knowing how to apply and use a windlass tourniquet correctly, bandage a snake bite, stabilise a fractured limb, treat a stroke or seizure patient, tell the difference been asthma and anaphylaxis, or the the difference in how you apply the 5&5 technique to remove the blockage in an airway of a choking child versus a choking adult. There are countless situations that require basic medical skills and knowledge, and if you don’t have those skills or possess that knowledge, then you may be one of the thousands of people who stand by helplessly watching someone die unnecessarily. Let’s be honest. That guilt would weigh on a person’s consciousness for the rest of their life.
Luckily, there is one quick and easy way to avoid any and all guilt. Even the most basic CPR or BLS course will give you the skills you need to equip you with the ability to save lives. For less than $100, you can gain nationally recognised RTO-approved certification.
What Does A First Aid Course Teach You
Courses include a combination of bookwork theory and practical hands-on demonstrations and practice will be used to teach First Aid principles. First Aid training can teach you the practical and technical aspects of providing First Aid. You will learn how to approach and examine a casualty to assess if they are conscious or unconscious, breathing or not breathing and if they are in a state of cardiac arrest or have a heartbeat. You will be taught how to ensure personal and scene safety, triage multiple victim trauma situations, perform basic resuscitation on infants, children, and adults, use a defibrillator (AED), and deal with a range of fractures, bleeding wounds, and GSW, stabbing, or traumatic limb amputation related traumas.
Your training course covers essential basic skills on wound care, burn level identification and management, choking, airway, and breathing emergencies. In addition, you will be taught how to identify shocks, deal with fractures, and how to use First Aid for sudden onset illnesses, stroke, seizures, and heart attacks.
Most basic level BSL courses can be completed in one day on the practical front and one day online, learning the theory side that can be undertaken in the privacy and convenience of your own home. FirstAidPro is one of only a few certified training providers that can offer an advanced level course to further build on your skills and knowledge. Some courses and providers may require several days, depending on the complexity and content of the course material.
You will receive a nationally recognised First Aid certification in Australia upon completing your course. While the registered training organisation content is standard across the board as a minimum requirement, some providers and trainers genuinely want to impart as much experience and detail into their courses as they can go above and beyond the minimum requirement. Some training providers will feature scenarios that directly mimic real-life situations during an emergency using fake blood and devices made to mimic arterial wounds and bleeding etc., that can appear hyper-realistic.
