Sports First Aid

First Aid for Sport is the application of essential first aid principles to casualties in the sporting environment, including, athletic events, team sports, disability sports, water sports and adventure sports, giving emphasis and bias to the statistically common sporting injuries. Additionally the course focuses upon the unique sport related decisions the first aider has to make such as return to play and stopping the activity whilst dealing with an incident. Most coaching awards now demand a minimum up to date first aid qualification as part of their validity.

What makes React First different?

  • Environment specific courses
  • Trainers know the sport
  • Training in context to sport
  • Hands-on practical courses
  • Instructors undergo meticulous training program and yearly appraisals
  • Innovative training techniques

The course
The First Aid for sports course appears on the National Database of Accredited Qualifications (NDAQ) and has Unit Structure
H/501/2760 - Sport First Aid Emergency Action
K/501/2761 - Sport First Aid Incident Management
Further pathway modules are available for specific sporting activities

To view the full descriptions of these courses, please go to the Accredited Qualifications website.

 

Course - Unit 1 - Emergency Action (7hrs)

A systematic life-saving sports first aid course covering the essential knowledge, skills and decisions for all first aiders in this sector, especially addressing the influence of sports activity upon casualty care.

 

Course - Unit 1 Content

  • Safe best practice
  • Vital signs
  • A systematic approach to incident management
  • Unconsciousness, causes and treatment
  • External bleeding, internal bleeding and shock
  • Resuscitation procedures including choking
  • Awareness of current regulations
 

Course - Unit 2 - Incident Management (7hrs)

Managing the statistically common injuries and illnesses in a range of sporting contexts using safe, casualty centred first aid systems, this course also examined issues not commonly covered on most first aid courses such as return to play decisions. This certificate completes the minimum first aid requirement to maintain the validity of most sports governing bodies.

 

Course - What's the Benefit of Unit 2?

Unit 1 is reactive first aid. Unit 2 is proactive first aid this is where the penny drops. An analogy may be a tennis player can have all the individual shots but it is only when they combine them together through practice that they are able to play a game. First aid is like learning to play a sport, in Unit 1 you learn each skill in isolation with one casualty and one responder. In Unit 2 you are learning to manage more than one injury and/or casualty while communicating with bystanders who may help or hinder the situation. (A tennis coach can teach you how to play a drop-shot but not when to play it. This comes from experience.) Unit 2 is where this experience is learned giving the first aider a strategy to cope with any and all incidents recognising the key decisions that need to be made.

You may wish to consider it to be best practice to extend the course to Unit 2 where the assessment of your activity indicates you may need to deal with a more complex incident or where you are dealing with a larger group of sports people.

First aid in the real world has very little to do with medical skills and everything to do with problem solving!
 
 
To book a course or make an enquiry click here