First Aid / CPR / AED Instructor Courses Update

CPR training with Welch Allyn AED 20 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am scheduled to take the American Red Cross First Aid/CPR/AED Instructor Course on November 25th.

I also called about becoming an AHA instructor, unfortunately the American Heart Association no longer accepts provider certification cards from American Red Cross, so I have to start all over at the beginning and take the First Aid/CPR/AED course again with them. I got that scheduled for this Friday the 16th, then we scheduled their instructor course for the following Tuesday the 20th.

So, if everything goes as planned, I will have my instructor cards for both American Red Cross and American Heart Association on the 25th.

The funny thing is, the courses from American Red Cross are the most expensive by far. Their

provider card course was $110 and the instructor course is $640. With the American Heart Association, both the provider card course and the instructor course combined was only $440 total.

Apparently with American Heart Association, in order for me to be able to offer the individual courses (first aid, CPR, AED) and not just a complete package of all three courses, I have to break my provider cards up into individual cards. Doesn’t make any sense to me, but ok, if that’s what they want, that’s the way I will do it. This way I can offer just the First Aid / CPR course, dropping the AED portion if a client prefers it that way.

Once I have those cards I will use them to automatically become an instructor with the National Safety Counsel under their “grandfathering” provision, instead of having to pay to take their courses.

So, hopefully beginning next month we will be able to start offering the American Red Cross, American Heart Association, and National Safety Counsel First Aid / CPR / AED courses.

Related articles

• First Aid / CPR / AED Training (thechefstableblog.com)

First Aid / CPR / AED Training

CPR training (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We have decided to start offering First Aid, CPR, and AED courses to our clients, but we can not decide which courses to offer between American Red Cross and American Heart Association.

I have been an instructor for both organizations and taught both courses previously and each has their pros and cons. The “civilian world” seems to prefer American Red Cross, whereas because of my previous profession as a Paramedic with a volunteer rescue squads in Arkansas and North Carolina I know the medical community prefers American Heart Association.

Since I will be focusing on the foodservice industry and not the medical community this time, I am leaning towards ARC, yet their course prices are currently higher than AHA’s so that has me wondering if I should go with the American Heart Association instead.

Because the foodservice industry is considered a “high risk” industry, (lacerations and possible amputations) OSHA regulations require every foodservice operation that is not within 4 minutes of a clinic or hospital to have trained staff and first aid supplies on hand. Here on Oahu the average response time for an ambulance is 8 minutes, twice the OSHA requirement. Unfortunately many in the restaurant and foodservice industries do not realize this requirement until they are fined for not being in compliance with it. That is why we are wanting to start adding these courses onto our training program offerings.

There are also courses from the International CPR Institute and the National Safety Council, just to make things more confusing.

So, to settle this matter, Im asking for your feedback. Which course(s) do you think we should start teaching for the foodservice industry?

Related articles

• The American Heart Association Announces New CPR Guidelines No more A-B-C’s – Now it’s C-A-B (prweb.com)
• How to Perform Basic CPR: Infants to Preschool-aged Children (everydayfamily.com)