Paediatric first aid training teaches first aid skills that are designed to be used on children.
They can be applied to anyone under the age of 16. It’s a specialised form of first aid that is designed to be used in environments where there are children present. If you work with children or infants, first aid training would highly benefit you and might even be mandatory in some settings.
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) states that anyone with level 2 or level 3 qualification in childcare issued on or after 30 June 2016 must also have either a full PFA or an emergency PFA certificate in order to be included in the required staff to child ratios at level 2 or level 3 in an early years setting.
Paediatric first aid covers first aid techniques that are specific to infants and children. There are a lot of differences in first aid techniques that are applied to adults in comparison to children. For example, things like the recovery position, CPR, and choking use different techniques for use on children and infants.
You will also learn about the responsibilities of a first aider, how to properly assess and respond to an emergency and how to deal with an unresponsive child. These will be more specific to a childcare or early years setting.
It’s important to train for certain situations that you might come across, with this specific training. There is more of a focus on things like choking and swallowing harmful objects as this is something more commonly found to happen with infants.
