Educating children in First Aid at St. Josephs RC Primary School
Providing a first aid experience to young children has long been a project that I hoped to develop and roll out to the young people in our local communities. It’s a hugely rewarding opportunity to be able to empower the next generation to be able to provide some lifesaving skills from a young age.
Through my employment as a paediatric nurse tutor at Edinburgh Napier University, I was given the opportunity to complete my first aid instructor course and the idea became more viable.
The opportunity arose when a support for learning teacher sadly passed away in our local primary school, St. Joseph’s R.C Primary School. It was an unexpected event and left lots of the school population feeling upset and scared. Discussions In the playground between both parents and children about what to do in these situations and hearing the misinformation being shared encouraged me to try and provide some informed teaching sessions.
I went the next day with a plan scribbled on a piece of paper and spoke to my incredibly supportive line manager, who gave me the go-ahead to start developing the concept and ultimately run a pilot project at the school.
I worked alongside the school to devise a programme of learning to cover and decided to deliver the teaching to all the students in the school.
Programme:
Day one was an introduction to first aid and initial management of common incidents. Important topics such as care of burns, head injury, bleeding, bites, stings, feeling faint, broken bones, and asthma including how to help a person use their inhaler were covered in this session through a mixture of practical learning, power points, and active games.
Day two was helping a patient who was choking and CPR using the structured approach of DRSABC (Danger, Response, Send for help, Airway, Breathing, CPR). This helped the pupils assess the patient safely whilst ensuring engagement and teamwork. I also incorporated safe defibrillation and where to access the local defibrillator with the upper primary school.
Day three we taught using stations in which the pupils worked in small groups and moved around. We covered how to call the emergency services, basic anatomy, and how our body works and ended the sessions with some yoga and mindfulness.
Day four was an exciting day where I invited all the local emergency services to come to the school and talk about their roles. On the day we had the police, fire service, paramedics, mountain rescue, and a water safety expert. The teams all attended with some equipment and even an ambulance to allow the children to try the kit and explore.
This was an exceptionally fun and educational experience; I feel that it is a hugely impactful way to disseminate information to children. Debriefs were completed after each session with both staff and pupils and they were encouraged to discuss their own experiences and how they felt.
This was a hugely rewarding venture and I am looking forward to further developing and offering this to further schools and community groups in the future. Since completion, the school has managed to raise enough money to have its own defibrillator installed within the school.
Written by: Gillian Laird, University Tutor, School of Health and Social Care
