Extension
The news hitting our inbox this week will come as a small but helpful reprieve for all workplaces where First Aiders have seen their certification lapse. The Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council (PHECC) have extended the recertification deadline to the 31st July 2021. As such if your First Aid Response certificate ‘expiry date’ reads anytime since last March 2020, rest assured it remains valid until 31st July 2021. Most importantly your current workplace first aid training remains compliant with regulatory and legislative guidelines. Plus it means you won’t have to complete the full course when recertifying. Your eligibility for the shorter recertification course remains intact.
Skills
In the meantime workplace First Aid Responder skills drift further. Confidence and competence decrease the longer it has been since the date of training. So now is a great opportunity to revisit some of the skills, scenarios and treatment guidelines. We’ve put together a wealth of first aid resources on our website. They are organized making it easy to find the topic you’re looking for, be it bleeding or burns, asthma or anaphylaxis. Take just a few minutes and read the signs and symptoms, watch the treatment videos and study the PHECC clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). These are all accessible by following this link – https://healthco.ie/resource-first-aid-cpr/. We are continually adding to this resource area to give our learners and clients 24/7, 365 access to the information they need to be confident in their role as a First Aid Responder.
Training
If you are a workplace that needs to run a first aid response course in-house, we are delivering our training in compliance with our Covid Response Plan and government guidelines. Feel free to contact us to see how we can meet your needs – https://healthco.ie/contact/
We also have a schedule of First Aid Response courses taking place in the Northeast in Dundalk, Co. Louth, check and see if one of the dates suits you – https://healthco.ie/public-courses/
We hope you found this article useful. Let’s keep aiming for safer, healthier workplaces.