Outdoor First Aid FAQs
1. What is Outdoor First Aid & how does it differ from First Aid At Work?
The training is for remote locations
Training in Outdoor First Aid is all about looking after a casualty in the outdoors. Sounds too obvious I know. Crucially it means you may find yourself far from help, in a remote location and inaccessible to the ambulance service. You will be with your casualty far longer than in an urban setting and so the outdoor course prepares you for this type of situation. Furthermore, you need to learn who to call, who to ask for, and what vital information you need to have to hand.
Environmental factors
I bet you’ve never learned on a standard course what to do if you’re bitten by a snake, or stung by a jellyfish? (And no, don’t ask your mate to pee on you – that’s lesson #1!)
As well as teaching you how to deal with bites and stings, on an outdoor course we also pay a LOT of attention to weather extremes, hot as well as cold. In turn, much of the training on one of our courses takes place outside, where the harsh reality of the wind and rain is the best teacher.
In an urban environment, you will probably just tell the casualty to sit still and wait for the emergency services. For the outdoor environment you must be prepared to undertake a thorough primary survey, to keep the casualty warm, to manage other people and to consider self-rescue. You may need to do things that you would never do in an urban context, like splint fractured bones.
This means that on an Outdoor First Aid course you are likely to learn far more than on a standard first aid course.
Equipment
As a runner, when I’m out in the hills, I don’t carry a big green first aid box. Furthermore, I won’t have a defibrillator nearby, or anything else I might be able to lay my hands on when I’m at home or at work in an office. So as a first aider I need to learn how to make best use of the kit I’m likely to have to hand. Improvisation is a big part of outdoor first aid training, since you will likely only have a lightweight first aid kit.
2. What do you need in an outdoor first aid kit?
What I carry as a mountain leader or as a climbing instructor is different to what I carry as a mountain biker or as a runner. (I have written more on first aid kits here). And while everyone gets hung up about casualties bleeding out etc, it’s highly likely this will never be something you deal with. So when you pack a first aid kit focus first on the less sexy side of life: hypothermia. And take it from there …
Be equipped to keep the casualty warm
You should always head out equipped to keep a casualty warm. Almost every casualty that gets rescued by Mountain Rescue has hypothermia, so take a survival bag, some insulation, and some heat pads as standard. Slow down the process of hypothermia before it begins.
And be equipped to monitor your casualty’s vital signs
Also, at some point you just won’t know what to do next. If you do nothing more than keep someone warm, get help on its way, and then monitor your casualty, then that is good first aid. I always carry a casualty monitoring card. I have never needed a trauma dressing, but almost always have needed a casualty card! This one bit of kit is BRILLIANT. (Learn more here).
3. Who decides what is taught on an Outdoor First Aid course?
In essence there are three bodies that guide us in what we teach on these courses.
1. UK Resuscitation Council (UKRC)
Firstly, it’s important to look at what the UK Resuscitation Council dictates. These guidelines are designed for first-aiders in an urban environment. On all our first aid courses we include teaching for what to do in an urban environment, and so the UKRC is our first port of call.
2. Mountain Rescue England & Wales (MREW)
Secondly, we look at what Mountain Rescue do. Be clear, we are not trying to teach you to become MR technicians, but theirs is an organization that has lots for the first-aider to learn from.
3. ITC First
Thirdly, ITC First, our Awarding Organisation tells us what needs to be assessed and what the correct first aid is for those specific situations.
But also, Personal Experience
More widely, is our hard-earned experience. All our trainers are outdoor professionals who have worked and played in the outdoors for a long time. In turn we have been required to do a lot of first aid. It is this experience that also pays into how we teach, and what we teach.
4. What should be the course content on an outdoor first aid course?
With experience you will learn where the risks lie in what you do. As a runner I know that ankle injuries, hypothermia, and hypoglecaemia (low blood sugars) are what I need to know about. As a mountain biker I need to know about head injuries, internal injuries and puncture wounds (as well as lots of cuts and grazes). The list goes on!
On an outdoor first aid course you want to be confident that what you may have to deal with, will be covered.
We cover these topics on our 2 Day Outdoor First Aid Course as standard
- Vital Signs – making informed decisions on the information you have
- Primary and secondary surveys – prioritising first aid, with a level head
- Airway management & managing the unconscious casualty
- Casualty monitoring in the outdoors
- CPR with the use of AEDs (defibrillators)
- Drowning
- Bleeding and catastrophic bleed management
- Fracture management / immobilising limbs & the use of improvised splints
- Chest injuries, head injuries
- Environmental factors
- Casualty evacuation
- Common conditions – asthma, diabetes, seizures, strokes
A good course will also be able to be flexible for the client group. So a group with Scout leaders will also need Meningitis, Sepsis, Dental emergencies and Paediatric CPR included.
5. Why do Mountain Rescue volunteers do Outdoor First Aid courses?
Not just MR volunteers, but doctors and other medical professionals frequently join courses. The reason being is that they are not first aiders. If you think about it, the clue is in the name: Mountain Rescue, rescue. Their training is not about sitting around for hours on end, doing their best with a first aid kit that can fill a lunch box, supplemented with a pair of walking poles and a bit of gaffa tape. When the mountain rescue team rocks up, they have a highly trained team of volunteers, who each have their allocated roles, a lot of training, equipment and drugs. Hence we regularly have MR team members join us to learn the perspective of the job as a first-aider. (And this is great – because we also learn from them!)
6. What is the duration of an Outdoor First Aid course?
Our courses need to be valid and recognized by the various governing bodies such as Mountain Training, British Cycling and BASI (The British Association of Snowsport Instructors), to name but a few. To that end our courses must offer 16 hours of learning time spread over 2 or more days.
Our Advanced Outdoor First Aid course is 21 hours over three days, and is thus designed to prepare leaders and field-scientists for world-wide locations and expeditions far from help.
7. Who should attend an Outdoor First Aid Course?
Anyone that works or plays outdoors should consider doing an outdoor first aid course. If you have responsibility for others in the outdoors, then this is a course you should consider investing some time and money on.
Originally, qualified outdoor leaders would be the only people to seek out this sort of first aid training. Since 2010 when the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) delegated control of what training should be done to individual organisations based on a risk and needs based assessment, there has been a growth of alternative options to First Aid at Work type courses.
Additionally with regulated and accredited courses, (like ours), the assessment process has been made to be more robust and fit for purpose. Hence there are now properly regulated courses on offer that sit beside the traditional First Aid at Work. This means that first aid training relevant to the workplace outdoors is far more widely accessed by employers who regularly employ people to work outdoors eg in construction, engineering or forestry.
8. Who is best for teaching Outdoor First Aid?
Ok – I am obviously biased here, but in my vast experience (since mid-1990s) of attending first aid courses up and down the land, in the UK and overseas too, the best trainers have been other first aiders. Not the paramedics, not the mountain rescue technicians, not the doctors. Learning how to use IM drugs, or a spinal board, or oxygen is going to be of zero use to you when you are up a mountain with a cold broken mate sitting in front of you. (Because you carry none of those things).
You need someone to teach you first aid that knows the situation you will be in, with the kit that you have got. If the person teaching you first aid hasn’t been on a cold wet mountain or river (and loved it) in the past year or so, then the chances are they don’t really get where you’re at, or what you could be faced with. To that end a good instructor for these courses is someone who loves being outdoors and completely gets what you’re likely to be doing, with who, and with what kit.
You also need someone to teach you first aid who is a GOOD TEACHER. Someone who welcomes your questions, who can answer them in terms you understand, and who might sometimes just have to say, “I don’t know”. Someone who knows that practical hands-on repetition is far better than a Power-Point presentation.
Finally, as well as being a first aider, a passionate lover the outdoors, and a GREAT teacher, they do also need to be a first aid nerd (like me). They need to love the subject and be current with their practice and CPD.
So, learn from a good teacher, who loves being outdoors and who knows their first aid!
Will4Adventure First Aid is a leading provider of Outdoor First Aid Training offering specialist led First Aid Courses for the outdoors and the workplace.
ALL of our First Aid Courses are regulated by Qualifications Scotland or Ofqual and are Accredited by ITC First.
Our courses all meet HSE Standards for due diligence for First Aid providers.
We regularly receive genuine five star reviews from our course attendees.
Our First Aid Courses are taught nationwide in the UK at Training Centres in the North of England, the South of England, and Wales, within easy reach of major cities and popular areas.