This CPR and First Aid certification course is also known as the Emergency First Response Primary Care and Secondary Care course. The course teaches participants how to respond to life-threatening emergencies and also covers injuries or illnesses that are not immediately life threatening.
The program focuses on care through a combination of knowledge development, skill development and realistic scenario practice to make sure participants have the confidence in their ability to provide care when emergency situations arise.
Our CPR and First Aid course is medically based, following the same priorities of care used by professional emergency care providers. The courses assume a local Emergency Medical Service is in place to support Emergency Responder care.
Our courses follow the emergency considerations and protocols as developed by the members of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation – ILCOR.
Providing all independent study is completed prior to class the CPR and First Aid course is approximately 6 hours in duration. All skills are performance based and not time based ensuring that all skills have been mastered.
The Emergency First Response Primary Care (CPR) course covers emergency care for most life threatening situations. Students are taught the Cycle of Care to guide them.
The Emergency First Response Secondary Care (First Aid) course covers secondary patient assessment and first aid. Secondary patient assessment teaches participants how to conduct patient head-to-toe evaluations, allowing them to determine the extent of an injury or illness when Emergency Medical Service personnel are unavailable or delayed. Participants learn both injury and illness assessment sequences, which helps them prepare information for EMS personnel. The first aid portion of the course teaches participants how to support and care for specific disabilities, injuries and illnesses discovered during a secondary patient assessment and prior to EMS arrival.
The goals for both Emergency First Response Primary Care (CPR) and Secondary Care (First Aid) courses are:
- Increase access to CPR education, increase effectiveness and efficiency of instruction, improve skills retention, and reduce barriers to action for basic life support providers.
- Provide a positive and nurturing learning environment that reduces participant anxiety, guilt and fear of imperfect performance.
- Teach a course that increases the percentage of CPR and first aid-trained laypersons who use their skills without hesitation to assist those in need.
- Combine CPR and first aid into one Emergency Responder protocol.
- Teach a simple CPR and first aid protocol that promotes long-term memory retention by participants.
- Maximize participant skill development and practice time, while minimizing instructor led knowledge development (lectures).
- Teach a course following the latest ILCOR (International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation) Basic Life Support guidelines, thus providing an internationally consistent course flexible enough to accommodate regional CPR and first aid protocols and cultural differences.
- Integrate participant independent study whenever possible for course efficiency and respect for valuable participant time.
Core Performance Requirements
Upon completion of both courses, Emergency Responders will be able to:
- Perform a scene assessment.
- Use barriers appropriately.
- Perform a patient responsiveness check by giving the Responder Statement and then tapping the collarbone, grasping or squeezing the shoulder or arm to gain patient attention.
- Phone an Emergency Medical Service number at the appropriate time within the CPR and first aid sequence.
- Quickly recognize unresponsiveness and absence of normal breathing to determine when CPR – chest compressions – is appropriate.
- Perform one rescuer, adult CPR – chest compressions – at a rate of at least 100 compressions per minute, to a depth approximately one third the depth of the chest – at least 5 centimeters/2 inches.
- Minimize the frequency and duration of interruptions to chest compressions to maximize the number of compressions delivered per minute.
- Perform effective chest compressions by allowing the chest to completely recoil after each compression.
- Open and maintain an airway using the head tilt-chin lift or pistol grip technique.
- Provide effective rescue breaths (normal breaths of 1-second duration) that make the patient’s chest rise. The rescue breaths may be given using the mouth-to-mouth, mouth-to-barrier, or mouth-to-mask techniques.
- Perform complete CPR with chest compressions and rescue breathing at a rate of 30 compressions to 2 rescue breaths.
- Explain the importance and timeliness of defibrillation within the CPR and first aid protocol and list the two ways it can be obtained (EMS and AED provided).
- Perform an emergency move and place a person in the recovery position.
- Demonstrate how to assist a conscious choking patient and/or an unconscious choking patient consistent with local protocol.
- Manage serious external bleeding using direct pressure.
- Perform appropriate shock management.
- Stabilize and manage suspected spinal injury.
- Provide manual stabilization of suspected skeletal injuries when Emergency Medical Service personnel will be delayed.
- Perform initial and ongoing assessments of an injured or ill person when Emergency Medical Service personnel are either delayed or unavailable.
- Perform all skills in a manner that minimizes risk to the Emergency Responder, patient and bystanders.