Online and blended First Aid courses

Whilst First Aid is a practical skill, all First Aid courses have elements that you do not necessarily need to be taught face to face in a classroom. For instance, in the absence of someone actually presenting with the symptoms, a lot of medical conditions can only be discussed using Powerpoints or handouts – something that can easily be done at ones own pace outside the classroom.

In 2015 the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recognised this and allowed certain courses to have an online element – but note that all Workplace and Paediatric workplace courses still demand a certain amount of classroom time as there will always be some aspects that cannot be taught or practised and assessed by the student watching a video or Powerpoint.

What are the advantages?

The advantages of a partially or fully online First Aid course are:

  • The online part can be carried out at home – no travel costs and at a time to suit you. Work best at 3am? No problem. Grab an hour before the kids come home? Sure.
  • The online part can be taken at a pace to suit you. Need to pause for a phone call? Need to rerun a particular part for clarification? Easy.
  • You can pause and seek clarification from the Internet, no matter how smart/dumb/off-topic your question
  • It’s a lot cheaper. Videos are made once and shown thousands of times. A trainer generally interacts with no more than 12 people at a time.

There are two types of online course:-

  1. Fully online. e.g. Pet First Aid or Appointed Person courses can be taken in this way.
  2. Blended. This is where the first (often background / theoretical) part of the course is taken online and the practical part is taken in a Classroom. The Online part involves watching a series of videos covering the various topics then answering multiple choice questions after each.

Click on the following links to see what online courses we can offer:

Course not listed? Check out the full range or online courses at Virtual College, our online course partner.