First Aid Courses During Covid-19

The Hot Response First Aid Team are already undertaking essential first aid training for childcare, schools, front line workers and businesses, adhering to Covid-19 social distancing measures with enhanced infection control measures. The safety of your staff and ours is of critical importance. Everyone will need to adhere to social distancing and so when booking a group course, please bear this in mind. We will also be working to extremely strict hygiene and infection control measures to minimise any infection risk.

There will be wipes and/or hand sanitiser available for all attendees and ask everyone to clean their hands, on arrival and regularly throughout the day. Especially prior to and after any practical elements. Everyone is encouraged to bring there own personal face shield to use during practical sessions. There are new training methods to allow for social distancing. We request all attendees support and cooperation in maintaining everyone’s health and safety throughout the day.

It is vital to ensure your first aid qualifications remain current and that you continue to comply with your legal requirements for businesses, schools and childcare centres.

Classroom set up:
Learners should be seated approx. 2 metres apart. For our client bookings, we ask that you to give us the largest room possible and undertake a risk assessment to ensure it is suitable for the agreed number of attendees to maintain a safe distance from each other whilst undertaking the sedentary and practical elements of the course.

Unfortunately, if social distancing is not possible within the allocated space, we will need to reduce the number of attendees or allow more time to complete the course.

If our trainer has any concerns that they or the attendees are likely to be at risk because of the class set up –they will raise this with you and me before commencing training.

We also ask that you make provision for breaks and toilets in order for everyone to safely access these facilities without overcrowding.

Please ask attendees to bring a suitable face-covering to the course. They won’t be required to wear it throughout the training, but it is helpful to have if necessary.

Social distancing

Class induction process:

On arrival, we will check that all Learners are well and anyone exhibiting respiratory COVID-19 symptoms such as a new continuous cough and/or a temperature >37.5 – will be asked to leave immediately.

We will also check that no Learner is in a situation where they should be self-isolating (e.g. a family member has had Covid19 symptoms, or the Learner should be shielded as they are in an at-risk group). We will notify you if this is the case and exclude from the course, as necessary.

As everyone arrives we will ask them to thoroughly sanitise hands alcohol wipe/gel/sanitiser. Please also ensure that everyone washes their hands on arrival at the premises. We will ask everyone to cleanse their hands before, during and after all the practical sessions and when they return to the training room following breaks.

We will be reminding everyone of the importance of social distancing and basic hygiene throughout the course.

Everyone will need to maintain physical distancing throughout the entire course unless everyone is correctly wearing a suitable face covering.

Enhanced infection control measures:

We use Laerdal Manikins and replace the one-way airflow, valved lungs extremely regularly as per infection control advice. There are additional safety measures in place:

One-way valves which stop air coming back out of the manikin mouth and direct expired air out of the back of the head via a filter.
We will use Alcohol/sanitising wipes to scrub the mannequins between Learners.
In addition, we will deploy anti-surfactant wipes (e.g. Trionic wipes) after each session. The Trionic wipes are even stronger and remove any bio-film as well as killing any residual germs.
We have been advised that these steps alone are sufficient to prevent infection. This is all that is normally used on most first aid courses.

We will still use alcohol/sanitising wipes on the manikin between Learners even with a face shield. Trainers will always use as many manikins as possible to reduce sharing.

Enhanced infection control

There are additional modifications concerning the practical elements of the course:

CPR
The Australian Resuscitation Council still require rescue breaths to be trained and assessed which will be simulated, we will let you know if this changes. We will therefore carefully follow the manikin hygiene procedures detailed above. Trainers will ensure that everyone is fully aware of the ARC guidance on performing real-life CPR during the COVID-19 pandemic and the protective measures that should be taken.

Unconscious Casualty
The trainer can demonstrate the recovery position on a Learner if both people are wearing an appropriate face covering and both sanitise their hands before and after. If face coverings are not available, trainers can demonstrate placing themselves in the recovery position. We can assess Learners performing the primary survey on a manikin and placing themselves into the recovery position.

Choking Casualty
The Learner will demonstrate back blows and the correct hand positioning for abdominal thrusts on a manikin.

Other practical elements
For most of the other practical elements, the learner will demonstrate on themselves to minimise unnecessary contact.

We will minimise the sharing of kit and equipment. If we need to share any equipment, we will thoroughly sanitise it before and after each use.

Since we have reopened for essential training, we have received some fantastic feedback!

For more information on our range of first aid courses please click here