Red Cross run various courses tailored to the groups needs/ wants. There will be a Red Cross branch near you I guarantee it, we get everywhere nowadays Lol.
Yes, including the American Red Cross running Wilderness courses.
There is no such qualification as an outdoor first aid at work, the HSE only recognize the standard first aid at work certificate, you can however have bolt ons for the outdoors but drug prescribing is a definite no no as is the use of tourniques for any first aider.
The HSE reconise three different First Aid at Work Certificates. The Standard, Offshore, and Diving.
As you said there are also bolt ons for different enviroments. Which do include adminstering drugs, for specfic reasons.
A standard first aid certificate holder (the highest level of training and competance available to the public) is allowed to administer only paracetamol for pain relief but only after certain criteria is met, the other is aspirin in the case of heart attacks again only when certain questions are asked and criteria met.
Oh no there not! :yikes:
Under one very specfic curcumstances you can give asprin, but that is all.
If you are a Red Cross member working for the Red Cross, if asked for, you can ask some questions, and provide the recommend doses of Paracetamol. The questions are approved by a doctor, and are basically what someone who can prescribe would ask. It is actually the same system for all non-doctors, regardless of drugs. They set up a protacal, and it is followed. I am not sure how the Nurse perscriping system works, but I think they are taking bits of the doctor course.
Also I am not actual sure what the highest level course a member of the public can get is. A First Aid at work Holder can do a EMT course, but there are all sorts of courses that you can do, that are higher than the First Aid at Work. The BTLS should be available to the Public, and that is the surposed to be a higher than first aid at work.
As I said before a first aid at work course will cost over £300 but doing a more in depth standard certificate course as a member of the public, paying for it yourself will cost only £60 and nowadays we tend to tag the defib training onto this.
It will cost you over £2000 to get a full Wilderness EMT certificate. First aid training courses are expensive. If you pay the £300, it counts and you can use it at work, and to go on other courses. At one point the two courses(Public, and Work - Work ignored children for a start) were slightly different, but the Red Cross always taught them the same. Which in a weird way made more sense.
Also I would like to clarify a little misconception if I may. It does not matter which first aid course you take, the treatment is exactly the same whether the ambulance will take 10 mins or 10 days, the procedure is the same. The only difference taught for differing ambulance eta is for fractures, and you will be taught both procedures on all courses even on the basic course. I hope this perhaps clears a few things up.
The standard first aid at work course is based around the 8 minute ambulance time. The offshore one is not because there is no way that casualty is going to be in hosiptal in under an hour.
I agree the procedure is the same, but a Wilderness course is double the hours of the standard course, so they teach more of the procedure than the standard first aid course because you are not going to wait 10 days for the next life saving step. For a start are you going to do CPR for ten days? Someone has been stung by a bee, massive allergic reaction, helecopter is going to take two hours, do you let them die or inject aredaline?
Wilderness medicine is a whole field on its own. Doctors do Wilderness medical courses.
May I also point out that although the Red Cross as an organisation no longer have youth group as part of their membership they do still cater in a major way to youth and schools first aid training nationwide. Also it may interest you that the Red Cross certificates are now recognised nationaly and internationaly.
Red Cross certificates are not recognised nationaly and internationaly unless something has massively changed. It was one of the big problems within the organisation. For a start the first aid at work cert, is a HSE cert, under their guidlines, and enforcement. Almost all of the other courses work that way, so they would have to be teaching what the course body wants them to, so the Red Cross on the certificate means nothing. The big problem is they taught the information but as their course, which outside of the Red Cross means nothing, because it does not have the realvant backing, or awareness.
I am not Red Cross bashing, I am a Red Cross member, and it is a brillant organisation, but like any it has its problems.