Your Primary Care Training White Paper contains up-to-date information on:

• Practice Training responsibilities
• Clinical and non-clinical training requirements
• Training standards

Click here or on the image for a PDF copy, which you can print or save to your computer.

Recommended audience: General Practices and Dental Surgeries

What is Basic Life Support training?

• Basic Life Support Training is also sometimes referred to as CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) Training. They are the same thing.
• This white paper is suitable for General Practices and Dental Practices.

Who needs to be trained?

• The Resuscitation Council UK state that ‘all healthcare professionals who work in the community may be required to resuscitate a victim of cardiopulmonary arrest.’
• ‘All members of the Primary Health Care Team who have contact with patients should be trained and equipped, to a level appropriate for their expected role, to resuscitate patients who suffer cardiopulmonary arrest in the community.’
• ‘The minimum standard should be proficiency in BLS’.

Why is training so important?

• There are approximately 30,000 out-of-hospital Sudden Cardiac Arrests (SCA) every year in the UK.
• Seven out of ten cardiac arrests occur outside of hospital. Currently in the UK, only 2-3% of these people survive.
• An SCA can occur to anyone, at anytime and at any age and it doesn’t matter how fit you are.
• Although an SCA may be triggered by a heart attack, the causes are different. A heart attack is a caused when blood flow to the heart is blocked.
• The current rate of initial bystander CPR in England is reported to be around 43%
• 12 people under the age of 35 die every week due to SCA in the UK.
• When someone has a cardiac arrest, every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces their chances of survival by 7-10%.
• Currently, only 20% of cardiac arrest victims are in a ‘shockable’ rhythm when the emergency services arrive. CPR helps keep the heart in a shockable rhythm.
• If CPR is performed effectively, and a defibrillator is used within 3-5 minutes of cardiac arrest, survival chances increase from 6% to 74%.
• The emergency services average response time to a cardiac event related incident in an urban area has increased from 8 to 11 minutes.

What Should be Trained?

• Training for practices should cover Basic Life Support for out of hospital resuscitation, and also how to deal with someone that is choking.
• It is best practice to ensure that everyone knows how to deal with a non-breathing casualty, whether they are an adult, child or baby.
• Since 2017 it has been part of the guidance that training on using an automated external defibrillator (AED) should be included in all resuscitation training, as an integral part of the training, and not viewed as an ‘optional extra’. AED training is suitable for both clinical-and non-clinical staff, and does not require any prior knowledge.

Should Every Practice have an AED?

• The Resuscitation Council UK state that ‘Every healthcare practice should be equipped with an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and appropriate arrangements should exist to ensure that it is readily available in the surgery whenever it may be required. Equally, there should always be someone capable of using the AED whenever patients may be in the building.’
• ‘An AED should also be available to those providing medical cover outside normal practice hours’

What are the standards?

• The Resuscitation Council UK set the standards and guidelines.
• It is important that the correct guidelines are trained, for example there are different guideline for in hospital, and out of hospital arrests.

Can it be completed online?

• The Resuscitation Council UK state that ‘theoretical training alone without actual practice, for example on training manikins, is likely to be of limited value. The use of manikins should therefore be mandatory.’

How often should people be retrained?

• There are variable answers to this question. However, The Resuscitation Council UK state that ‘resuscitation skills decline rapidly and regular updates and retraining using manikins are necessary to maintain adequate skill levels.’
• ‘Formal studies have shown that repeated tuition and practice is the most successful method of learning and retaining skills in resuscitation.’
• Our recommendation, in line with the Health & Safety Executive, is that training is refreshed every 12 months.
• Some CCG’s suggest a refresher of at least every 18 months for clinical staff, and three years for non-clinical staff.

What about CPD?

• For Dental Professionals:
  • A minimum of 10 hours in every five year CPD cycle must be spent on medical emergencies and resuscitation training.
  • SkillBase First Aid’s training is CPD verifiable, and certificates are innues inline with GDC guidelines.
  • The GDC recommend that all dental professionals do CPD in medical emergencies every year

How long should it take to train people in CPR and the use of an AED?

The length of CPR/AED courses across Europe varies and is dependent on the method of delivery; ratio of instructors to participants; the amount of hands-on training; the equipment available; and, most importantly, the characteristics of the learners. For these reasons, it is not possible to recommend an optimum duration for a CPR/ AED course. The aim is to ensure all participants acquire the knowledge and skills required for them to act correctly in actual cardiac arrests and thereby improving patient outcomes.

• SkillBase First Aid courses take a combined approach which includes Adult, Child and Baby Basic Life Support and AED in a 2.5 hour session called Essential Life Support.

Who are SkillBase First Aid?

SkillBase First Aid are specialist providers of Resuscitation and First Aid Training. We work with hundreds of General and Dental Practices across the UK, along with delivery directly to the teams of several CCG’s. To find out more about our courses, call our team on 0330 335 1234, email info@skillbasefirstaid.com, or visit our website at www.skillbasefirstaid.com/primarycare.

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Super simple to arrange

It’s easy to arrange a course for a group at your location. It only takes one call. Call us on 0333 335 1234 now, or drop us a line, and we’ll take care of everything.

Our trainer will bring everything they need with them. all you need to provide is the people and the venue. If you are unsure about if a venue is suitable, we’ve got this great guide available:  Creating a Great Training Environment.

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