World First Aid Day is observed on the second Saturday of September annually. Since 2000, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement have been holding annual events to raise awareness of people about how first aid can be provided. Lectures and training are designed to remind people that having basic skills in this responsible sphere is important not only for personal safety, but also for society as a whole.
A survey by the Research Institute of Healthcare Organisation and Medical Management showed that only 8% of Moscow residents could say that they knew all the rules of how to provide first aid. 25% admitted that they did not know them at all. 30% of all surveyed participants had experience in providing first aid. Not all of them were confident in what knowledge and skills they had.
Why are not all people ready to take on this responsibility? According to a survey by the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia, among the reasons is an insufficient level of training. Many of us are afraid of, for example, the onset of legal liability in case of an unfavourable outcome and lack of confidence in what effect the first aid may provide.
Today, educational institutions and employers are responsible for providing training of the rules, techniques, and nuances of how to provide first aid. More often than not, it is seen as a formal procedure. Only when we find ourselves in a critical situation, with counting minutes, we do realise the importance of the lessons, lectures, and instructions we had been given. Mastering first aid techniques is essential, first of all for yourself: for being able to help yourself, family members, and loved ones. The new online course ‘First Aid’ will guide you through how to provide first aid.
The course includes 10 modules covering a wide range of topics: legal foundations of first aid; first aid for children; what to do with burns, frostbite, bleeding, poisoning, electrical injury, and foreign bodies in the respiratory tract; and methods of how to provide psychological support for victims.
You will know what actions to take in case of an accident, how to carry out resuscitation measures, how to apply the Heimlich technique, and apply bandages to name but a few.
The authors of the course have collected relevant and comprehensive information and created a unique manual for providing first aid to victims.
Who is the course suitable for?
- For managers – to organise training for employees
- For workers and specialists in labour protection – to improve qualification
- For teachers and students, or anyone – to improve competence and expertise
The course material is presented in the format of short illustrated video lectures and supplemented by practicing the described techniques on extras and dummies.
Associate Professor of the Department of Fundamentals of Medical and Special Knowledge, Saint Petersburg University
Saint Petersburg University’s online course ‘First Aid’ is available on the platform OpenEdu. To celebrate World First Aid Day, we invite all of you to refresh what you know or learn how to provide first aid.
Click here to view all the online courses offered by SPbU (Saint Petersburg University). The original article appears in https://english.spbu.ru/news-events/news/first-aid-basics-new-online-course-offered-st-petersburg-university
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