If you work in childcare, or indeed any other health and social care, it is crucial that you undergo first aid training. In fact, in some roles and in most organisations, it is a basic requirement of the job.
Paediatric first aid training teaches you how to plan for and respond to medical emergencies for the children in your care. You learn how to appropriately respond to everything from unconsciousness and bleeding to wounds, cuts and other injuries.
However, there are circumstances in which more specialist training will be needed. An example of this is anaphylaxis first aid training, which is designed to help care workers effectively treat allergic reactions.
As part of an anaphylaxis first aid training course – generally lasting half a day – you will learn about allergic reactions and how to spot the symptoms in the children you take care of. A crucial part of the training is learning how to use an auto injector to treat an allergic reaction, which when combined with CPR knowledge could save a child’s life in an urgent medical situation.
Until an emergency medical team arrives on the scene, you are the only source of treatment a child having an anaphylactic reaction can rely on. This is why in-depth first aid training is so vitally important.