Resuscitation & First Aid Guidelines 2025

🩺 RCUK First Aid Guidelines 2025 — Overview

While these guidelines aren’t mandatory until January 2026, staying informed is vital. Remote First Aid has fully adapted our courses and materials in line with the official rollout. For now, let’s dive into the must-know changes that will improve our chances of saving a life.

⭐ Purpose & Approach

The 2025 guidelines emphasise accessible, inclusive, and context‑sensitive first aid training. They highlight the importance of preparing learners not only with technical skills but also with the confidence to act, addressing fear, anxiety, and moral distress that may arise during or after providing first aid.

🧑‍🏫 1. First Aid Courses

• Courses should be accessible to the widest possible audience.
• Training must be tailored to:
  • Participant needs
  • Low‑resource or rural settings
  • Sociocultural context
  • Feasibility of delivery
• Courses should include strategies to help learners manage fear, anxiety, and moral distress before, during, and after providing first aid.

🧍‍♂️ 2. Expectations of a First Aider

• Providers can minimise injury, improve health, and prevent death by being taught to check for scene safety, calling 999, and only using available equipment or medications they have been trained to use.
• There are occasions when a first aider may be directed to use equipment by the emergency services that they may not have previously had in-depth training on. 

🧰 3. First Aid Kits

• Should be present in:
  • Workplaces
  • Leisure centres
  • Public buildings
  • Homes
  • Cars
• Public kits must be clearly marked and accessible.

❤️ 4. Cardiac Arrest

• If cardiac arrest is suspected:
  • Call 999 immediately
  • Follow the dispatcher’s instructions for CPR
• Emphasises the importance of dispatcher‑assisted CPR.

🩺 5. ABCDE Assessment

• Immediate attention to:
  • Scene safety
  • Responsiveness
  • Life‑threatening bleeding
• Use the ABCDE framework for anyone ill, injured, or in shock.

💤 6. Recovery Position

• Adults and children with decreased responsiveness who do not require CPR should be placed in a lateral (side‑lying) recovery position.

🌬️ 7. Oxygen & Pulse Oximetry

• If trained, give oxygen to people who:
  • Have difficulty breathing
  • Appear cyanosed
• Cyanosis recognition is highlighted as a key skill.

🚑 8. Emergency Categories

• Medical emergencies, covering Anaphlaxis, Asthma & Low blood sugar values, opiate/opioid poisoning, Stroke, and suicidal thoughts.
• Trauma emergencies, C-Spine, Jaw Thrust, Controling life threating bleeding, Open chest wounds, Preserving amputated body parts,
• Environmental emergencies, drowning, hypothermia, heatstroke, snakebites

The following Regulators involved with workplace first aid legislation ALL agree that all first aiders should attend annual refresher training in years one and two of their current certification when certified to provide first aid to ensure that skills are maintained and any updates are applied.

• The Health & Safety Executive.
• First aid in schools, early years and further education – GOV.UK
• Inspection guidance resources – Estyn
• SIA licensing: first aid training requirement – GOV.UK
• IOL – Outdoor First Aid

Remote First Aid provides annual update refresher training programmes supporting certificated first aiders:

• Workplace first aiders
• Paediatric first aiders
• First responders

Stay safe, stay trained, and let’s keep saving lives together!