Careers and Training
Call for nursery staff to renew first aid training every year
Nurseries are failing to deliver sufficient first aid training to their staff, Fred Owen, regional training manager of St John Ambulance will tell delegates at the NDNA conference today.
Mr Owen claims that many nurseries see organising first aid training for their staff as a ‘tick-box exercise’ and as a result most practitioners are unable to put the skills they’ve learnt into practice when an emergency situation arises, or do the wrong thing.
He says that learning basic first aid is the difference between a ‘life lost and a life saved’, and would help prevent the deaths of the 24 children under five-years-old that died from choking last year, a figure from the ONS death registry data.
The regional training manager also recommends that all staff be given an annual first aid refresher, as he says that after three years the skills of practitioners fade.
Under Oftsed regulations it is mandatory for all practitioners working with children to have an appropriate first aid qualification.
www.sja.org.uk
