First Aid Training Academy

29/08/2025

Rounding our week of back to back Paediatric First Aid courses off.
The dedicated staff team here are a pleasure to work with and they take the children’s safety very seriously. Well done guys.

15/08/2025

11/08/2025

⚠️ Together with the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, we’re advising the public to stop using certain non-sterile alcohol-free wipes, as they may be contaminated with Burkholderia stabilis.
The following products have been found to be affected:
• ValueAid Alcohol Free Cleansing Wipes
• Microsafe Moist Wipe Alcohol Free
• Steroplast Sterowipe Alcohol Free Cleansing Wipes
• Reliwipe Alcohol Free Cleansing Wipes
📰🔗 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/public-advised-to-stop-using-certain-non-sterile-alcohol-free-wipes

05/08/2025

🤏🍗😲 Removing an object with fingers when choking

🦷 Unless you’re a dentist, you should probably go throughout your life keeping your fingers out of other people's mouths. This is especially true when someone is choking, even if you are a dentist!

🤏 Blindly inserting your fingers in the back of someone’s mouth could push the object further down the throat. You also run the risk of being bitten!

👉Instead, you should follow the first aid procedure of encouraging the patient to cough, followed by administering back blows, and then abdominal thrusts if necessary. If the casualty becomes unconscious, you should give CPR. If you struggle to give rescue breaths after giving 30 chest compressions, it is okay to look in the mouth, but only to remove an obvious obstruction that you can see.

15/07/2025

The importance of understanding Agonal Gasps.

08/07/2025

Andy has been in Hexham working with Action For Children, ensuring their staff are confident in their First aid skills.

07/07/2025

🤏👅 Grabbing the tongue to stop someone choking when unconscious 🤏👅

It’s a sight many football fans may be familiar with; two players take a knock leaving one unconscious. But it is what follows next that we’re focussing on today. In an effort to stop the unconscious player from “swallowing their tongue”, some players think they need to grab it.

Well, we’re grabbing our whistle and blowing for fulltime on this myth. It is not humanly possible for you to swallow your tongue. However, it can still block the airway.

If someone is unconscious, tilting the head back will open the airway, as it lifts the back of the tongue away from the back of the throat. Using two fingers to lift the chin will clear the airway even more.

23/06/2025

Congratulations to today’s Students on passing their Level 3 First Aid at Work course.

23/06/2025

Final day of training for our clients at Barnard Castle School, making sure their college’s and students are safe.

20/06/2025

♥ MYTH: A heart attack is when the heart stops beating 💔



♥ We’re not sure where this myth has come from. Probably TV. But, whilst the heart may stop beating as a result of a heart attack, this isn’t what a heart attack is. If the heart stops beating, it’s called ‘cardiac arrest’.



💔 A heart attack is caused if the surface of a cholesterol plaque in a coronary artery ruptures and the contents leak out. This leads to the formation of a blood clot, which completely blocks the coronary artery, resulting in the death of an area of the heart muscle.



♥ An area of dying heart muscle is unstable and can sometimes interrupt the heart’s electrical impulses, causing cardiac arrest, so it’s a good idea to have a defibrillator very nearby just in case.



💔 Luckily, the majority of people who have a heart attack are sat upright and talking to you and modern treatments have hugely improved survival rates.

09/06/2025

CPR training saves lives.

Just 24 hours before a trip to Italy in 2022, John’s heart suddenly stopped.

Had his wife Susan, and daughter Kendall, not been trained to respond to the ultimate medical emergency, he may not be with us today.

Read the story of how John’s loved ones helped save his life: https://www.resus.org.uk/about-us/news-and-events/case-study-susan-cpr-training-helped-save-my-husbands-life

23/05/2025

If you come across someone with a suspected spinal injury, not moving them is a reasonable rule to follow. But there are some exceptions to this rule.

If the casualty is in danger, they may need to be moved for their safety. Recent studies (please see comment section) have shown that a casualty ‘self-extricating’ themselves from a vehicle causes less spinal movement than when the emergency services cut the roof off the car to extract them – so it is safe to ask someone to carefully step out of a vehicle if they are able.

If the casualty isn’t breathing, then you will need to put them on their backs and begin CPR.

If the casualty is unconscious, laying on their back and has fluids (e.g. vomit) blocking the airway, you will need to turn them onto their side (ideally using the spinal recovery position if you know how).